End-to-End Regulatory Compliance Evolution Pipeline: From Legal Requirements to Developer Tests
TL;DR
This vision paper presents a workflow that operationalizes constantly evolving regulatory requirements into automated developer-focused tests and orchestration of requirements elicitation, regulatory interpretation, traceability, test generation, and developer feedback into a continuous compliance workflow.
Abstract
As artificial intelligence agents become more prevalent, software systems are becoming even more deeply integrated in our lives while also growing in complexity. In response to societal concerns about safety and privacy, new regulations are being regularly introduced, posing significant compliance challenges for software engineers. This challenge is multifaceted, spanning the interpretation of legal texts, determination of how regulations apply to a specific software product, validation of end-to-end compliance, and, at the lowest level, the need to guide developers throughout this process. This challenge is exacerbated by the constant changes in regulations, requirements, and software systems. We posit that an end-to-end integration of requirements engineering and software testing, down to developer practices, could advance regulatory compliance for software systems. In this vision paper, we present a workflow that operationalizes constantly evolving regulatory requirements into automated developer-focused tests. The novelty of our approach lies in the orchestration of requirements elicitation, regulatory interpretation, traceability, test generation, and developer feedback into a continuous compliance workflow.
