Requirements Composition Table explained

Aspect-oriented requirements engineering (AORE) introduced an artifact called Requirements Composition Table (RCT). RCT presents a holistic view of an application's functionality structured by core features and crosscutting concerns. This artifact can effectively support various project tasks and serve as a common frame of reference for all parties on a project team. As AORE remains little-known to most practitioners in the software development field, the purpose of this paper is to explain the RCT concept to practitioners and discuss its benefits. The RCT technique has been implemented for a number of Wall Street applications at various investment banks. RCT can help us perform important project tasks and has proven to be one of the most valuable artifacts of a software project. This paper discusses the steps to develop an RCT, provides an example of how to use it to perform change impact analysis for releases, describes experiences using RCTs in practice, and discusses lessons learned on projects implementing the RCT technique.