Abstract
Requirements engineering is still an area of software engineering in which theory and practice greatly differ. This work presents the results of an empirical study of artifacts created and used in the requirements engineering process. We discover that meeting notes and lists of requirements are most commonly used, that they usually play the role of information sources, and that specification documents are information sinks. Furthermore we show that most projects create several different artifacts. Finally we find out that despite the quality risks, inconsistencies between artifacts are often accepted.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Sommerville, I., Sawyer, P.: Requirements Engineering – a good practice guide. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, New York (1997)
Sommerville, I., Ransom, J.: An Empirical Study of Industrial Requirements Engineering Process Assessment and Improvement. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 14(1), 85–117 (2005)
IEEE: Guide to Software Requirements Specification, ANSI/IEEE Std 830-1984 (1984)
Cleland-Huang, J., Chang, C.K., Christensen, M.: Event-based traceability for managing evolutionary change. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 29(9), 796–810 (2003)
Gorschek, T., Svahnberg, M.: Requirements Experience in Practice: Studies of Six Companies. In: Engineering and Managing Software Requirements, pp. 405–426. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Paech, B., Koenig, T., Borner, L., Aurum, A.: An Analysis of Empirical Requirements Engineering Survey Data. In: Engineering and Managing Software Requirements, pp. 427–452. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Gotel, O.C.Z., Finkelstein, A.C.W.: An analysis of the requirements traceability problem. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Requirements Engineering, pp. 94–101 (1994)
Ramesh, B., Jarke, M.: Towards reference models for requirements traceability. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 27(1), 58–93 (2001)
Forward, A., Lethbridge, T.C.: The Relevance of Software Documentation, Tools and Technologies: a Survey. In: DocEng ’02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM symposium on Document engineering, pp. 26–33. ACM Press, New York (2002)
Lethbridge, T.C., Singer, J., Forward, A.: How Software Engineers Use Documentation: The State of the Practice. IEEE Software 20(6), 35–39 (2003)
Nikula, U., Sajaniemi, J., Kälviäinen, H.: A State-of-the-Practice Survey on Requirements Engineering in Small-and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Technical report, Telecom Business Research Center Lappeenranta (2000), http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/renoir/TBRC_RR01.pdf
Neill, C.J., Laplante, P.A.: Requirements Engineering: the State of the Practice. IEEE Software 20(6), 40–45 (2003)
Juristo, N., Moreno, A., Silva, A.: Is the European Industry Moving Toward Solving Requirements Engineering Problems? IEEE Software 19(6), 70–77 (2002)
Boehm, B.: Software Engineering Economics. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1981)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Winkler, S. (2007). Information Flow Between Requirement Artifacts. Results of an Empirical Study. In: Sawyer, P., Paech, B., Heymans, P. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4542. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73031-6_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73031-6_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73030-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73031-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)