A Bird's Eye View of Natural Language Processing and Requirements Engineering

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has demonstrated effectiveness in many application domains. NLP can assist software engineering by automating various activities. This paper examines the interaction between software requirements engineering (RE) and NLP. We reviewed the current literature to evaluate how NLP supports RE and to examine research developments. This literature review indicates that NLP is being employed in all the phases of the RE domain. This paper focuses on the phases of elicitation and the analysis of requirements. RE communication issues are primarily associated with the elicitation and analysis phases of the requirements. These issues include ambiguity, inconsistency, and incompleteness. Many of these problems stem from a lack of participation by the stakeholders in both phases. Thus, we address the application of NLP during the process of requirements elicitation and analysis. We discuss the limitations of NLP in these two phases. Potential future directions for the domain are examined. This paper asserts that human involvement with knowledge about the domain and the specific project is still needed in the RE process despite progress in the development of NLP systems.