A Lightweight Requirements Engineering Process for Web-Based Competition Management Systems: The GOHIT v2 Case Study

Adoption of the most suitable requirements engineering (RE) process and selection of the most appropriate RE techniques for a given project is a common challenge faced by industry. This paper presents a methodology for RE process development for a given project. The novelty of this work is four-fold. First, a RE process knowledge base (REPKB) is established and it helps during RE process development. Second, a decision support mechanism is provided during RE process development. Third, this methodology uses three components: process building blocks, standard templates of the RE process and development guidelines, to help process development. Fourth, it explicitly links project characteristics with RE process development so that the most suitable RE process can be developed. The theory behind this methodology is described in the paper. Preliminary results suggest that the methodology is of valuable help to requirements engineers during RE process development and process customization.

Requirements problems are widely acknowledged to have impact on the effectiveness of the software development process. In order to improve the requirements engineering (RE) process and to reduce requirements problems, Sommerville et al. [1] have developed a requirements maturity model. Literature shows that the measurement process, designed in this model, is very confused and can lead organizations to incorrect results. This is because the measurement process is ambiguous and no strategic and systematic approach is used to decide different scores for various RE practices.The objective of this paper is to propose a measurement instrument for Sommerville et al.’s model to effectively measure the maturity of the RE process. The main purpose of proposing this measurement instrument is to develop better ways to assist practitioners in effectively measuring the maturity of the RE process. This instrument provides a very practical structure with which to measure the maturity of the RE process. I have tested this instrument in one case study where only one category of RE process, i.e. ‘requirements elicitation’ was used as an exemplar. The case study results show that the measurement instrument has potential to assist practitioners in effectively measuring the maturity of ‘requirements elicitation’ category of the RE process. Thus, I recommend organizations trial this instrument for other categories of RE process in order to further evaluate its effectiveness in the domain of RE process.

Requirement engineering (RE) process clear description can be an important factor for guiding the team members involved in the RE process, which may help organizations not exceeding the estimated schedule and budget for the software project. There can be many reasons of not having efficient RE process such as changing situations among the organizations involved in the RE process. It is certainly one of the various other reasons of having non-efficient RE process. Due to these changing situations the RE process customization accordingly should be performed. As part of our current research project, where we are investigating situational RE in Global Software Development (GSD), first we need to identify the factors which may results in changing situations. This paper we have critically reviewed the domain of “standards and models”, and identified the initial list of situational factors from them. These standards and models are related to software engineering, which directly or indirectly discusses RE process. We have adopted the constant comparison and memoing techniques of the Grounded theory for identification of unique initial list of the situational factors. This initial list is a significant consideration for a comprehensive list of situational factors affecting RE process in GSD.

Software industry is adopting global software development (GSD) due to its potential to produce quality products at a lower cost. However, the GSD firms face many challenges that make development activities more complicated, especially related to the requirements engineering (RE) process. The objectives of this article are to investigate and prioritize the barriers faced by the GSD organizations during the RE process. First, we identified 17 barriers related to the RE process in the GSD projects. Next, the identified barriers were further validated with real‐world GSD practitioners using a questionnaire survey. Finally, we applied the analytical hierarchy process to prioritize the investigated barriers with respect to their significance for the RE process in the GSD domain. The results show that coordination is the most significant barrier category for the RE process in GSD projects. Lack of standard and procedure for RE in GSD, lack of synchronized communication infrastructure, and lack of mutual understanding between the overseas RE teams are also high‐ranked barriers for the RE process in GSD. The authors believe that the findings of this study will assist practitioners and researchers in developing effective strategies and plans for the successful implementation of the RE process in the GSD context.

The anticipated benefits of Software Development Outsourcing (SDO) are not achieved in case of several projects because of the issues that emanate from Requirements Engineering (RE) process. This research work presents a Requirements Engineering Practices (REP) model to cope with the customarily occurring issues of the RE process for SDO. To formulate the model, five workshops have been conducted and Root Cause Analysis has been performed by considering 43 commonly occurring SDO RE process issues, and 147 RE practices to tackle the issues. To discover the root causes for commonly transpiring issues, 5- Whys technique has been employed. The relevant RE practices that can be used to deal with the root causes, have been endorsed by applying Brainstorming technique. For the 43 frequently occurring issues, 89 root causes have been discovered. Afterwards, 124 relevant RE practices have been recommended to eradicate the root causes and hence to address the corresponding issues. Thus, REP model postulates the root causes for commonly occurring issues of the SDO RE process, maps the root causes to the relevant best RE practices to address the corresponding issues. The model has been evaluated by an expert panel and evaluation results have been analysed through Inter-Rater Reliability analysis and Analysis of Means. The REP model supports the RE process for SDO by i). evading the adoption of random and inappropriate RE practices for dealing with the common issues of the process, ii) helping to attain the expected benefits of SDO.

Adoption of the most suitable requirements engineering (RE) process and selection of the most appropriate RE techniques for a given project are challenging issues for industry. In order to alleviate the problems, a framework for RE process development (FRERE) was developed based on our research in the last six years. The overall architecture of the framework and a brief case study are presented in the paper. The framework addresses several core issues of the RE process: engineering issues, domain issues, characteristics of the software project, and issues of conformity to software process standards. FRERE consists of three parts: (1) The RE process knowledge base (REPKB) which contains RE process knowledge, (2) methodologies which provide guidance to develop a customized software process model in an iterative way; and (3) assessment models which provide information about the suitability of the newly developed RE process model for the software project under development.

Selecting a suitable Requirements Engineering (RE) process is usually based on personal preferences or existing company practices rather than on the characteristics of the project at hand (project situation). Feature-oriented software development is the overall process of developing software systems in terms of their features. The Software Product Line (SPL) approach is a paradigm for systematic reuse of software products, and a Software Factory is a SPL aimed at the industrialization of software development. Based on the notion that a software/RE process can be developed via an engineering process, this research aims to provide a feature-based RE process factory to develop RE processes based on project situations. In our approach, the project situation is modeled as the problem domain (resulting in a situation model). A feature model can encapsulate all the features in an SPL; therefore, the variations and commonalities among RE processes can be represented in the form of a feature model, considered as a model of the solution domain. A mapping for translating the situation model to the RE process feature model is proposed with the specific aim of promoting traceability and rationality in the selection of RE process features.

The volume of software development outsourcing is growing enormously owing to the associated benefits of outsourcing and limitations of organizations. However, a large number of the projects outsourced for software development are failed to achieve anticipated results. In most of such cases, the reasons for failure are traced back to the Requirements Engineering (RE) process. In spite of this state of affairs, adequate efforts have not been made to avoid the failure of outsourced software development projects due to RE process issues. This research has been conducted with the aim of cultivating the RE process for software development outsourcing by identifying the significant RE practices for this process. The study is based upon Sommerville and Sawyer's RE practices for six key areas of the RE process. A survey research method has been used to collect data from 108 practitioners belonging to 18 national and multinational organizations associated with software development outsourcing. After analysis of the obtained data, we have identified the RE practices which are significant in order to improve the RE process for software development outsourcing and hence to achieve desired results.

Requirements Engineering (RE) process deals with elicitation, analysis, negotiation, validation, management, and documentation of requirements. Several artificial intelligence (AI) based approaches have been proposed to automate RE activities. However, the requirements engineering community still lacks a comprehensive understanding on how expert system are used in RE process. The objectives of this study are (1) to explore the different AI approaches which are employed in requirements engineering, (2) to identify the main phases addressed by these approaches, (3) to identify AI tools that used in RE process, and (4) we tried to find the contributions and the benefits of applying expert system in RE. We found that expert system can partially facilitate the RE process, however no expert system can fully automate the RE process.

This paper explores the requirements engineering (RE) process by conducting interviews with RE professionals and applying grounded theory to determine whether a theory of RE emerges. Analysis of the interviews revealed prominent data patterns that were used to model the RE process. The model depicts the RE process as one of establishing a match through discovery and streamlining, and which utilizes corrective measures in order to manage threats to establishing a match. The process involves many entities but is mainly conducted by RE professionals whose experience plays a major role in extracting complete requirements and detecting occasions of mismatch between customer needs and the software requirements, which represent their main concern during the process. This paper contributes to the empirical analysis of RE by presenting evidence of the RE process in its basic form as carried out in industry, which may form as a building block for further RE research.

Requirements Engineering (RE) process involves intensive communication and collaboration among software stakeholder members. Therefore, cultural values might influence both the RE process and its outcomes. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of culture on the RE process in a context of a conservative culture: Saudi Arabia. Our goal is to understand how the RE process can be adapted, taking into account cultural aspects. We explored and analyzed the influence of Saudi culture though Hofstede’s cultural theory. The empirical data was collected through a pilot case study with Saudi requirements engineering practitioners and software engineering researchers. The results are discussed, with a particular focus on the cultural influences on RE activities and the high-level descriptive models of the RE process.

Software and System Requirements Engineering (RE) is considered a critical process for successful projects. Incomplete, ambiguous, and/or wrong requirements can be delivered for next design phase when this process is non-adequately performed. Thus, a well-defined and suitable RE process is needed. For usual computing paradigms (e.g. object-oriented and component-based schemes) several stable RE processes are available. However, under the emergent service-oriented computing paradigm, while diverse adaptations have been posed, none of them has gained yet their standardized utilization acknowledgment. Consequently, academics and practitioners are still confused on what RE process and specific techniques can be used for developing service-oriented software systems (SoSS). In this paper, for advancing on such a problem and through a conceptual design research, we report: (i) an overview of a classic RE process and main used techniques, (ii) an analysis of emergent techniques reported in other domains but useful for SoSS RE, and (iii) an initial 30-mile view of a proposed systematic service-oriented requirements engineering (S-SoRE) process.

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The aim of our research is to find a suitable RE process to be applied in our organisation for the development of software projects. We identified the actor and their roles through the relation practice while implementing the RE process. In order to redefine the RE process, good analysis skill is needed besides having a good understanding of the RE process itself. We believe that our experince can be understood and used by other reseachers.

Developing a suitable Requirements Engineering (RE) process for a given project is a challenge faced by many practitioners. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-tier structure for a web-based Requirements Engineering Process dEvelopment AssistanT (REPEAT). This tool is designed to help requirements engineers develop a suitable RE process for a given project. The tool is an implementation of the RE process development methodology developed in our research. The novelty of this tool is three-fold. First, the tool uses interactive web technology to provide more accessibility for requirements engineers and to support the collaborative nature of RE process development. Second, REPEAT uses a novel multi-tier structure for enhanced design and maintainability. Third, the tool provides direct links between an RE process and the characteristics of a given project.