Requirements Engineering Practices Research Articles

Challenges of Requirements Engineering in Agile Projects: A Systematic Review

The practice of Requirements Engineering (RE) within Agile development contexts markedly differs from that within traditional development process. As the RE discipline in Agile Software Development continues to evolve, this research highlights and assesses various challenges to refine its impact on software product development. This study describes inductive and empirical research on Agile RE challenges and practices based on an analysis of data collected in the binding academic and scientific literature. This research is also based on the guidelines of a Systematic Review of the Literature (SRL) proposed by Kitchenham. Our results indicate eight type of challenges that we grouped into four themes: suitability delimitations, on software product development projects, the formation of the development team, and the efficient participation of the client during the process. Finally, this paper contributes detailed insights into RE challenges specific to Agile project development, evaluates their resolution extent, and outlines existing research gaps in RE practices

Evaluating the Role of Requirements Engineering Practices in the Sustainability of Electronic Government Solutions

The efficacy of electronic government (E-Government) initiatives relies significantly on requirements engineering (RE). Every government wants sustainable solutions in the implementation of E-Government projects. The current research has adopted a mix of research methods. After conducting a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR), the author conducted a case study to evaluate the proposed model. This research conducts an SLR of the contemporary literature on the success and failure factors of E-Government projects. Additionally, there is an association between the failure factors and the utilization of RE practices. A comprehensive search of electronic databases yielded a total of 71 pertinent articles. After meticulous screening and quality assessment, the data were extracted for analysis. A total of 62 papers were eventually selected. The SLR addressed the distinct hurdles encountered by government bodies. The findings indicated a positive relationship between the utilization of RE practices and the attainment of project success. Various aspects, such as project management practices, stakeholder engagement, and effective communication, were identified as factors that can reduce failures in E-Government projects. The deficiencies observed in E-Government initiatives were linked to inadequacies in implementing RE practices. The other issues identified were insufficient requirement elicitation, limited stakeholder involvement, and inadequate validation and verification of requirements. This study also presented a conceptual framework illustrating the difficulties in E-Government and the practices of RE. Statistical data analysis techniques were employed to examine this conceptual framework. This study suggests that managers examine and evaluate their E-Government project failure reasons and factors on a periodic basis to sustain and continuously enhance E-Government project success.

Challenges of requirements engineering in the (XP) methodology: a systematic review

The practice of Requirements Engineering (RI) in agile development is substantially different from traditional development. Extreme programming – (XP)(Beck, 2004) is one of the approaches of these agile methods. Traditional methodologies with their waterfall proposal, in pre-established phases, are being replaced by agile methodologies, their interactive and incremental development, with nonstatic requirements. The objective of the study describes an inductive and empirical investigation on challenges and practices with the XP and IR methodology based on an analysis of data collected in academic and scientific literature. To achieve the results, a strategy was implemented that allowed document findings, following the guidelines of a Systematic Literature Review (RSL). In this way, we contribute with a description of challenges in IR in relation to the development of projects with the agile XP methodology.

An empirically based model of software prototyping: a mapping study and a multi-case study

ContextPrototyping is an established practice within product and user interface design that is also used as a requirements engineering (RE) practice within agile development. Even so, there is a lack of theory on prototyping.AimsOur main research objective is to support practitioners in improving on their prototyping practices.MethodWe have designed a model that describes key aspects of the practice of prototyping. The model is based on a systematic mapping study consisting of thirty-three primary studies and on empirical data from twelve case companies. We validate and demonstrate the applicability of our model through a focus group at one company and through semi-structured interviews at eleven (other) startup companies. ResultsOur prototyping aspects model (PAM) consists of five aspects of prototyping, namely purpose, prototype scope, prototype media, prototype use, and exploration strategy. This model has enabled practitioners to discuss their prototyping practices in terms of the concepts provided by our model. ConclusionsThe model can be used to categorise prototyping instances and can thereby support practitioners in reflecting and improving on their prototyping practices.

Agile Software Development and Reuse Approach with Scrum and Software Product Line Engineering

Agile methods and software product line engineering (SPLE) are widely recognized as practical approaches for delivering high-quality software, adapting to evolving stakeholder needs, and tackling complex problems. This study proposes a hybrid agile software development and reuse approach called SPLE-Scrum based on the activities of software product line engineering and Scrum. Within the SPLE process, we incorporate requirement engineering and design practices to create a reference architecture with reusable components called core assets by introducing a product management meeting. The core assets are reused to build a series of applications with various product lines. The product increments are delivered in each Sprint with the review and retrospective meetings based on Scrum lifecycle and practices. We present a case study involving a blockchain online store to demonstrate the practical application of SPLE-Scrum, highlighting the benefits of integrating Scrum and software product line engineering. The research hypotheses of the proposed approach were validated through a study of structured interviews with 5 experts and 44 software practitioners, showing that the key factors of product management, project requirements, and product architecture in the SPLE-Scrum approach have a beneficial impact on project success. The SPLE-Scrum approach provides valuable insights and practical guidance for organizations seeking to optimize their software engineering practices while incorporating agile development and software reuse capabilities.

Unified Modeling Language for Requirements Engineering, Strategies and Best Practices for FinTech and Beyond

Effective requirements management is crucial in the rapidly evolving landscape of Financial Technology (FinTech) to deliver innovative and customer-centric solutions. Unified Modeling Language (UML) has emerged as a powerful tool in the FinTech industry for requirements management, providing a standardized notation and comprehensive set of diagrams. By leveraging UML, FinTech companies can overcome challenges such as miscommunication and inconsistency. UML fosters a common understanding among stakeholders, aligning perspectives and enabling informed decisions. This article explores strategies and best practices in leveraging UML for FinTech requirements management, addressing complexities, utilizing key UML diagram types, and overcoming challenges. Clear communication, collaboration, documentation standards, traceability, tool support, requirement validation, iterative approach, and model-driven development are highlighted as key practices. By adopting these strategies, organizations can streamline requirements engineering, ensure compliance, and deliver high-quality FinTech solutions. These strategies are not limited to the FinTech industry but can be applied in any industry and domain within the realm of software engineering and requirements management.

Evaluation of requirement engineering best practices for secure software development in GSD: An ISM analysis

AbstractTechnological advancement makes the world a global village. Security is an evergreen and everlasting area, because of the continuous threat from Hackers and Crackers. The immense use of software systems has modernized human society in every aspect. Thus, it is crucial to devise new processes, techniques, and tools to support teams in the development of secure code from the early stages of the software development process, while potentially reducing the costs and shortening the time to market. Considering the significance of software security, it is important to consider the security practices from the early phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC), that is, requirements engineering (RE). Hence, this study aims to identify and categorize RE practices important to apply for secure software development (SSD) in a geographically distributed development environment. To study the RE practices concerning SSD, we conducted a questionnaire survey with industrial experts in the global software development (GSD) context.Furthermore, the interpretive structure modeling (ISM) approach was applied to evaluate the relationship between the RE security practice core categories. This paper identifies 70 practices and classifies them into 11 fundamental dimensions (categories) to assist GSD organizations in specifying the requirements for SSD. The ISM results show that the “Awareness of Secure Requirement Engineering (SRE)” category has the most decisive influence on the other 10 core categories of the identified RE security practices. With the help of empirical evidence and the ISM approach, this work attempts to identify potential security practices and to give a set of secure RE practices that can be used to improve the security of the software development process.

Sustaining human health: A requirements engineering perspective

In our current day and age, Earth suffers under the human ecological footprint, which influences our health and well-being. Technological solutions, including software-related ones, may help tackle these concerns for humanity. However, the development of such solutions requires special attention and effort to overcome human, public, and social barriers that might prevent them from being effective. The Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health (REWBAH) workshop gathering in 2021 focused on addressing the challenge of how Requirements Engineering (RE) knowledge and practices can be applied to the development of information systems that support and promote long-lasting, sustained, and healthier behavior and choices by individuals. An interactive discussion among subject matter experts and practitioners participating in the REWBAH’21 revolved around several questions. In a subsequent qualitative analysis, the emerging themes were arranged in the sustainable-health RE (SusHeRE) framework to describe RE processes that address both sustainability and health goals. In this vision paper, we present our framework, which includes four main SusHeRE goals defined according to the changes in RE that we deem necessary for achieving a positive contribution of RE on sustainability and health. These goals involve improved RE Techniques, Multidisciplinary Expertise, Education Agenda, and Public and Social Ecology.

Towards understanding the influence of personality and team behaviors on requirements engineering activities

<span lang="EN-US">Requirements engineers play an important role in the development of software products and services. The nature of requirements engineering (RE) is multifaceted and influences the quality, success, or failure of software products. In gathering software requirements, engineers commonly work in a team, particularly when dealing with the customers or modeling the requirements, hence the team behavior may influence the RE activities. The investigation of requirements engineers’ personality and their team behavior associated with RE activities is still an open area in which research is still developing. This study aims to investigate the personality and team behavior of requirements engineers involved in RE activities using a systematic literature review approach. We included 64 primary studies that addressed the association between personality and team behavior of requirements engineers on the effectiveness of RE activities. The result shows that among personality dimensions, extraversion and conscientiousness were found to be the predominant personality traits that positively affect RE activities. Furthermore, team behavior of requirements engineers such as flexibility, collaboration, creativity, innovation, and norms were discovered as factors that influence the RE process, performance, and success. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge and practice of RE by providing empirical evidence on the influence of requirements engineers’ personality and team behavior on the effectiveness of RE activities.</span>

A Study About the Knowledge and Use of Requirements Engineering Standards in Industry

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Context</i> . The use of standards is considered a vital part of any engineering discipline. So one could expect that standards play an important role in Requirements Engineering (RE) as well. However, little is known about the actual knowledge and use of RE-related standards in industry. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Objective</i> . In this article, we investigate to which extent standards and related artifacts such as templates or guidelines are known and used by RE practitioners. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Method</i> . To this end, we have conducted a questionnaire-based online survey. We could analyze the replies from 90 RE practitioners using a combination of closed and open-text questions. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results</i> . Our results indicate that the knowledge and use of standards and related artifacts in RE is less widespread than one might expect from an engineering perspective. For example, about 47% of the respondents working as requirements engineers or business analysts do not know the core standard in RE, ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148. Participants in our study mostly use standards by personal decision rather than being imposed by their respective company, customer, or regulator. Beyond insufficient knowledge, we also found cultural and organizational factors impeding the widespread adoption of standards in RE. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions</i> . Overall, our results provide empirically informed insights into the actual use of standards and related artifacts in RE practice and – indirectly – about the value that the current standards create for RE practitioners.

The Current and Evolving Landscape of Requirements Engineering in Practice

Four exploratory surveys were conducted in 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2020 on the state of practice of requirements engineering. This article creates a panoramic view of the changes to the landscape of industrial practices by analyzing the responses from the four surveys.

Towards dealing with commonly occurring requirements engineering process issues during software development outsourcing.

Due to specific advantages, the volume of Software Development Outsourcing (SDO) is rapidly increasing. Because of challenges arising from the Requirements Engineering (RE) process, the anticipated benefits of SDO are not achieved in case of several projects. The objective of this research work is to recommend RE practices for addressing the commonly arising RE process issues in the case of SDO. For this reason, a thorough literature review has been undertaken, as well as two questionnaire surveys have been performed with skilled SDO industry practitioners. The surveys have been done by utilizing semi-supervised style and employing Convenience Sampling method. The 50 percent rule and a four-point Likert Scale have also been used to determine the advantages of RE practices for dealing with the issues. A comprehensive list of 147 RE practices has been extracted by conducting a Focus Group session. Furthermore, the 147 RE practices have been ranked by applying Numerical Assignment and Hundred Dollar Techniques during two Focus Group sessions. The detection and adaptation of RE practices aids in enhancing the SDO RE process, evading SDO failures, and achieving the associated SDO advantages.

Model to Cope With Requirements Engineering Issues for Software Development Outsourcing

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.

A Survey on Blockchain Acquainted Software Requirements Engineering: Model, Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions

Requirements are the basis of software development practices. Ambiguities in requirements lead a project to a point of failure or penalize it with a high budget and time for defect traceability. The ever-growing demand for advanced computing systems has increased the complexity of Software Requirements Engineering (SRE) practices. Blockchain systems require specialized SRE practices as the issues of Requirement Traceability (RT), developer/client confidentiality, and Requirement Negotiation (RN) typically exist in conventional approaches, which require more improvement. Moreover, blockchain technology incorporates the capacity to function as an infrastructure for the SRE framework providing transparency, security, and reliability. Even though the significance of studying blockchain in the context of SRE is evident, it is still in its infancy. None of the previous studies surveyed this domain to the best of our knowledge. We aim to summarize the scholarly contributions of blockchain acquainted SRE from 2015 to 2021 and to provide academia and practitioners with in-depth knowledge about this domain. In this article, we have provided a novel comprehensive review of the aspects of blockchain-acquainted SRE practices. We have presented SRE-based quality improvement factors and outlined the need for blockchain technology in this domain. Furthermore, we have classified SRE practices based on blockchain engineering. In addition, we have proposed a generic SRE model built on blockchain infrastructure along with its workflows. Similarly, we have provided implementation guidelines for the future development guidance of SRE applications built on blockchain technology. Finally, we have presented the current research challenges and provided future directions based on blockchain acquainted SRE.

Selection of Requirement Elicitation Techniques: A Neural Network based Approach

Requirement Elicitation is key activity of requirement engineering and has a strong impact on design and other phases of software development life cycle. Poor requirement engineering practices lead to project failure. A sound requirement elicitation process is the foundation for the overall quality of software product. Due to criticality and high impact of this phase on overall success and failure of projects, it is very necessary to perform the requirements elicitation activities in a perfect and specific manner. The most difficult and demanding jobs during Requirement Elicitation phase is to select appropriate and specific technique from a wide array of techniques and tools. In this paper, a new approach is proposed using an artificial neural network for selection of requirement elicitation technique from a wide variety of tools and techniques that are available. The training of Neural Network is done by back propagation algorithm. The trained and resultant network can be used as a base for selection of requirement elicitation techniques.

Reliable Requirements Engineering Practices for COVID-19 Using Blockchain

Improvement in the requirements for engineering practices is needed in areas such as requirement elicitation, validation, prioritization, and negotiations between stakeholders to create successful projects for COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) software. Many algorithms and techniques are used to create quality software projects, but they still need more improvement to work effectively for global pandemic COVID-19 software. By improving the reliability of requirement engineering practices using blockchain-based technology, the software will be reliable and will make it easier for the users working in a lockdown situation because of COVID-19. Therefore, our purpose is to identify the factors for reliable software engineering practices using blockchain-oriented technology for COVID-19 software. A systematic literature review is conducted to identify challenges and offer solutions. Through using blockchain-based technology for requirement engineering practices, the requirements will be gathered accurately and validated, and the conflicts between stakeholders will also be solved. It will improve the quality and reliability of COVID-19 software projects, which will help society work effectively from home. Improvement in the quality and reliability of COVID-19 software will improve users’ interest, and their working capacity will be increased.

Requirements Engineering: An Industrial Survey in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Requirements engineering (RE), the process of defining the requirements of a system, is critical to the successful implementation of software projects. Although many studies have been globally conducted on the different facets of RE in software engineering, studies explicitly focusing on the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been scarce. GCC-specific RE research studies are needed because of the unique cultural characteristics and common work ethics in GCC countries. Besides, the investigation of the state of RE practices in the countries of the GCC is crucial as the globalization of software development becomes imminent. This study compares the state of RE practices within the six countries of the GCC, namely, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, using six RE factors. To understand commonalities and differences in the RE practices and methods, 163 software practitioners in GCC countries are surveyed in this study. The results show that the RE practices are relatively similar among the six countries, with subtle differences. Initiating software-related projects with unclear requirements and undefined project scopes are the two major limitations of the RE practices among the survey participants. The results of this study contribute to providing project managers and system analysts, who are working globally and within the GCC countries, with valuable decision-making tools to help them consider the identified RE techniques, methods, and challenges and their related risks early in their software development projects

Requirement Engineering Challenges: A Systematic Mapping Study on the Academic and the Industrial Perspective

Requirement engineering (RE) is the process of discovering stakeholders’ requirements and needs and documenting them in such a way that they can serve as the basis for all other system development activities. Despite recent advances in RE practices and tools, requirements engineers are still experiencing fundamental problems. Therefore, the identification and characterization of such challenges would help RE practitioners manage and overcome such difficulties allowing them to meet expected quality objectives. The main objective of this paper is to identify and compare RE challenges reported in the literature and in practice. To this aim, we have conducted a systematic mapping study to collect and analyze RE challenges in the literature. Furthermore, we have also conducted a questionnaire-based empirical investigation to collect and analyze RE challenges faced by IT practitioners working for 15 companies located in four different countries. Results show that the top challenges are the same in the literature and in practice. However, overall, our comparative study revealed a weak positive correlation between RE challenges in the literature and in practice (Spearman coefficient = 0.3061). This weak positive relationship indicates that some of the challenges found in the literature are not perceived by the participant to have a great impact on the practice. This may be due to the fact that solutions to (or guidelines to avoid) some of the identified challenges have been provided by the surveyed corporations.

Empirical Investigation of Critical Requirements Engineering Practices for Global Software Development

There is a need to identify requirements engineering (RE) practices that are important to global software development (GSD) project success. The objective of this paper is to report our recent empirical study results which aimed to identify the RE practices that are important to GSD projects. This study used an online survey questionnaire to elicit data from 56 RE experts of GSD projects. The survey included 66 RE practices identified by Sommerville et al. for non-GSD projects. The participants were asked to rank each RE practice on a four-point scale to determine the degree of importance of each practice in the context of GSD projects. This research identified a set of six key RE practices that mainly focuses on GSD project stakeholders, scope, standards and requirements traceability management. One common theme that is evident from the RE experts' feedback analysis is the standardization of requirements documents to reduce requirements inconsistencies and improve communication in diverse and distributed GSD project environments Our results show that not all 66 RE best practices are important for GSD projects. We believe that a good understanding of the identified RE practices is vital in developing and implementing the situation-specific RE processes for GSD projects.

Exploring Impact of Requirements Engineering on Other IT Project Areas – Case Study

Requirements Engineering (RE) is recognized as one of the most important (yet difficult) areas of software engineering that has a significant impact on other areas of IT projects and their final outcomes. Empirical studies investigating this impact are hard to conduct, mainly due to the great effort required. It is thus difficult for both researchers and industry practitioners to make evidence-based evaluations about how decisions about RE practices translate into requirement quality and influence other project areas. We propose an idea of a lightweight approach utilizing widely-used tools to enable such an evaluation without extensive effort. This is illustrated with a pilot study where the data from six industrial projects from a single organization were analyzed and three metrics regarding the requirement quality, rework effort, and testing were used to demonstrate the impact of different RE techniques. We also discuss the factors that are important for enabling the broader adoption of the proposed approach.