Demystifying Ambiguous Words in Request for Proposals of Information Systems in Japan

Disagreements in interpreting words in software requirements specifications (SRSs) can lead to project failure. Various approaches to identifying and preventing ambiguous words in SRSs have been proposed. Yet, it is unclear which ambiguous words are used in the actual SRSs and to what extent they need to be modified. This paper quantitatively analyzes existing SRSs to clarify (1) how many ambiguous words are included in SRSs and (2) how many of these words require correction. This paper targets the Request for Proposals (RFPs), which describe the initial requirements of 40 systems of local governments, libraries, universities, and hospitals in Japan. Ten ambiguous Japanese words were analyzed. The result shows that “juubun” (sufficient) appeared most frequently, and 42% required correction when this word was used. The result also indicates that the number of ambiguous words varied greatly among the RFPs and that larger RFPs did not necessarily contain more ambiguous words.