A Semiotic Approach to Quality in Requirements Specifications John Krogstie SINTEF Telecom and Informatics and lDI, NTNU, Forskningsveien 1, N-0314 Oslo, Norway, Phone: +4722067425, Fax: +4722067350, Email: John.Krogstie@injormatics.sintejno Abstract: We have earlier developed a framework for understanding and assessing the quality of models in general, with emphasis on models made in conceptual modeling languages. At the same time, there is a long tradition on discussing quality of requirements specifications. Several authors have created taxonomies of useful properties of models and requirements specifications, as summarized by Alan Davis in his article from 1993. We have in this paper extended our quality framework for models based on the work by Davis on quality in requirement specifications, looking upon a requirements specification as a specific type of model. Comparing the approaches we find on the one hand that the properties as summarized by Davis are subsumed by our framework on a high level, and that there are aspects within our framework that are not covered by Davis. On the other hand, the comparison has resulted in a useful deepening of our framework on this specific kind of model, and in this way improved the practical applicability of our framework when applied to discussing the quality of requirements specifications. Key words: Requirements specification, Conceptual modeling, Quality 1. INTRODUCTION Modelling activities are central in the development and maintenance of computerised information systems. Examples of types of models that are developed are: The existing information systems in the organisation as they are perceived by the participants of the project are modelled during analysis. The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2002 K. Liu et al. (eds.), Organizational Semiotics 10.1007/978-0-387-35611-2_22