Supporting Requirements Engineering Research that Industry Needs: The Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering Initiative
This work targets the gap between academic research and industrial application in Requirements Engineering, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing discussions.
The paper addresses the challenge of aligning Requirements Engineering (RE) research with industry needs by introducing the Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering Initiative, which aims to identify and tackle practical problems faced by practitioners.
In light of the 40th jubilee of Requirements Engineering (RE), roughly 40 experts met in Switzerland to discuss where our discipline stands today. As of today, the common view is, indisputably, that RE as a discipline is stable and respected, as pointed out by Sarah Gregory when covering the seminar in her column to which articles like this one are invited to present ongoing research. However, it is also evident that after 40 years of promising research, conducting research that industry needs is still an ongoing challenge. Research that industry needs means research that solves industrial problems practitioners face; but do we really understand those problems? Here, I want to recapitulate on this research challenge and outline an initiative, the Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering Initiative, that aims at tackling this problem.