Empirical Validation of a Requirements Engineering Process Guide

Abstract

Current requirements engineering (RE) practice in industry lacks the availability of an integrated guide that defines and supports the requirements engineering part of embedded system development. Therefore, the RE part of a development project is not as structured and defined as desired. This paper presents results of an experiment validating a RE guide developed by a joint research project between industry and academia. In the experiment carried out for 14 weeks, embedded development projects using the guide were compared to projects following a state-of-the-practice process. The results suggest the guide to be suitable for mastering the RE part of an embedded system development.

Impacts of electronic process guides by types of user: An experimental study

“…EPGs have been posited for overcoming the natural limitations of printed documents or their digital versions (without a specific EPG design), which are: deficient in form and content, difficult to understand, to use and to access, and scarcely used in practice (Kellner et al, 1998;Hauck et al, 2008;Leuser et al, 2009). Research findings on EPGs has found benefits of their utilization such as: training and process execution improvement (Kellner et al, 1998); gradual tailoring of process, reuse, process conformance, resulting in better process management (Becker-Kornstaedt, 2000); and process communication improvement (Koolmanojwong et al, 2008).…”

“…Table 1 reports the study, the domain area, the type of research approach, the research setting, and main finding. In particular, we are interested in the experimental studies (Lott, 1997;McDonald and Miller, 1998;Koolmanojwong et al 2008;Leuser 2009). In Lott (1997) a repeated-measures experimental design with 20 individuals is reported in the context of Software Engineering process guidance.…”

“…Finally, in Leuser et al (2009) an experimental study contrasting the utilization of an EPG for Requirements…”

“…Based on the literature review on EPGs, which shows a lack (only 4 of the 21 studies reviewed) of experimental studies (Lott, 1997;McDonald & Miller, 1998;Koolmanojwong et al, 2008;Leuser et al, 2009) reported partial or no confirmations of the expected theoretical beneficial impacts, we peropose to address this knowledge gap.…”

“…The four previous experimental studies on EPGs were conducted with undergraduate (McDonald & Miller, 1998;Leuser et al, 2009) or graduate students (Lott, 1997;Koolmanojwong et al, 2008). In this study, a group of 38 participants was collected from four countries (Ireland, Mexico, India and USA).…”