Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems
This work provides empirically-based guidelines to help organizations of varying sizes and process models prevent critical requirements engineering problems, though it is incremental as it builds on existing survey data and analysis.
The paper tackled the problem of critical requirements engineering issues in software development by analyzing survey data from 228 organizations across 10 countries, resulting in the identification of key problems, causes, and mitigation actions tailored to company size and process model.
Context] Problems in Requirements Engineering (RE) can lead to serious consequences during the software development lifecycle. [Goal] The goal of this paper is to propose empirically-based guidelines that can be used by different types of organisations according to their size (small, medium or large) and process model (agile or plan-driven) to help them in preventing such problems. [Method] We analysed data from a survey on RE problems answered by 228 organisations in 10 different countries. [Results] We identified the most critical RE problems, their causes and mitigation actions, organizing this information by clusters of size and process model. Finally, we analysed the causes and mitigation actions of the critical problems of each cluster to get further insights into how to prevent them. [Conclusions] Based on our results, we suggest preliminary guidelines for preventing critical RE problems in response to context characteristics of the companies.