Status Quo in Requirements Engineering

Abstract

Context: Requirements Engineering (RE) has established itself as a software engineering discipline over the past decades. While researchers have been investigating the RE discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, attempts to systematically derive an empirical theory in context of the RE discipline have just recently been started. However, such a theory is needed if we are to define and motivate guidance in performing high quality RE research and practice. Objective: We aim at providing an empirical and externally valid foundation for a theory of RE practice, which helps software engineers establish effective and efficient RE processes in a problem-driven manner. Method: We designed a survey instrument and an engineer-focused theory that was first piloted in Germany and, after making substantial modifications, has now been replicated in 10 countries worldwide. We have a theory in the form of a set of propositions inferred from our experiences and available studies, as well as the results from our pilot study in Germany. We evaluate the propositions with bootstrapped confidence intervals and derive potential explanations for the propositions. Results: In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from the replication studies conducted in 10 countries with participants from 228 organisations. Our results represent a substantial step forward towards developing an empirical theory of RE practice. The results reveal, for example, that there are no strong differences between organisations in different countries and regions, that interviews, facilitated meetings and prototyping are the most used elicitation techniques, that requirements are often documented textually, that traces between requirements and code or design documents are common, that requirements specifications themselves are rarely changed and that requirements engineering (process) improvement endeavours are mostly internally driven. Conclusion: Our study establishes a theory that can be used as starting point for many further studies for more detailed investigations. Practitioners can use the results as theory-supported guidance on selecting suitable RE methods and techniques. CCS Concepts: • General and reference → Empirical studies; • Software and its engineering → Requirements analysis;

Challenges of Software Requirements Quality Assurance and Validation: A Systematic Literature Review

“…All techniques are discussed in the following subsections (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). Quality characteristics are discussed in subsection 8, whereas tools and datasets are discussed in subsection 9.…”

“…However, natural languages are prone to semantic and synaptic errors, as they do not adhere to a complete formal semantic grammar [S62, S63]. Consequently, requirements written in a textual form, such as initial requirements or user stories [3], are prone to errors that may lead to unacceptable systems. Additionally, the requirements specified in other diagrammatic notations, such as use cases [S15], sequence diagrams [S21], and behavior interaction diagrams [S08], are difficult to comprehend by nontechnical users.…”

Cross-Functional Teams That Grok It: The Collective Empathic Understanding of Product Requirements

“…This deeper examination of the context of the requirements is behaviour we would expect to reduce the requirements fixation that Mohanani et al (2014) identified that can occur as a result of requirements framing and our observations support this. Taking this broader perspective, attempting to understand a richer context of the requirements, is behaviour that we would expect to move these teams in a favourable direction with respect to the widespread cause of project failure identified by NaPiRE (Wagner et al, 2019) as being incomplete requirements.…”

“…RE is a Team Sport and Human Factors are Key NaPiRE notes that after 40 years of research and practice, the discipline of RE still struggles, despite significant contributions made over those years in the form of tools, methods, and process (Wagner et al 2019). As noted earlier, NaPiRE surveys indicate that many organisations in industry adopt these RE methods and even they still report the most common cause of project failure being incomplete requirements.…”

“…This cannot be achieved simply by improving requirements elicitation and validation approaches that rely on better analytical techniques, and more comprehensive templates while depending on the completeness and accuracy of the 'whisper-game' like communications along a development life cycle process chain. Until the human factors in RE, which NaPiRE acknowledges is a major characteristic of the RE discipline (Wagner et al, 2019), receives more attention, RE will continue to struggle in the respect of inadequate requirements understanding.…”