arXiv:2602.07182cs.SEcs.CL2026-02

用谱分析预测需求复杂度,准确率超95%。

Measuring Complexity at the Requirements Stage: Spectral Metrics as Development Effort Predictors

  • 从需求文本提取结构网络,用谱特征衡量复杂度。
  • 谱指标预测集成工作量相关性超0.95,优于传统指标。
  • 适合需求工程与系统架构早期评估,提升项目可控性。

工程系统中的复杂度是现代开发中持续存在的挑战,常导致成本超支、进度延误甚至项目失败。尽管架构复杂度已有研究,但需求规格中的结构复杂度仍缺乏理解与量化。本研究利用自然语言处理技术从文本需求中提取结构网络,并通过分子整合任务作为结构同构的代理,利用分子图与需求网络的拓扑等价性,排除领域知识和语义模糊性干扰。实验表明,谱指标对集成工作量的预测相关性超过0.95,结构指标相关性高于0.89,而密度指标无显著预测能力。结果说明,基于特征值的谱度量能捕捉简单连通性指标无法反映的认知与工作量维度。该研究弥合了架构复杂度分析与需求工程实践之间的方法学空白,为在需求阶段应用此类度量提供了验证基础。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Complexity in engineered systems presents one of the most persistent challenges in modern development since it is driving cost overruns, schedule delays, and outright project failures. Yet while architectural complexity has been studied, the structural complexity embedded within requirements specifications remains poorly understood and inadequately quantified. This gap is consequential: requirements fundamentally drive system design, and complexity introduced at this stage propagates through architecture, implementation, and integration. To address this gap, we build on Natural Language Processing methods that extract structural networks from textual requirements. Using these extracted structures, we conduct a controlled experiment employing molecular integration tasks as structurally isomorphic proxies for requirements integration -- leveraging the topological equivalence between molecular graphs and requirement networks while eliminating confounding factors such as domain expertise and semantic ambiguity. Our results demonstrate that spectral measures predict integration effort with correlations exceeding 0.95, while structural metrics achieve correlations above 0.89. Notably, density-based metrics show no significant predictive validity. These findings indicate that eigenvalue-derived measures capture cognitive and effort dimensions that simpler connectivity metrics cannot. As a result, this research bridges a critical methodological gap between architectural complexity analysis and requirements engineering practice, providing a validated foundation for applying these metrics to requirements engineering, where similar structural complexity patterns may predict integration effort.

复杂度度量需求工程谱分析

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