Starting Improvement of Requirements Engineering Processes: An Experience Report

Abstract

Defining and managing customer requirements is becoming increasingly important in product development. Many software organizations are interested in improving their requirements engineering processes, but they do not know how and where to begin. This report describes the experiences of two Finnish organizations that have started to develop their requirements practices systematically. To guide these development activities, software process improvement procedures and guidelines published in the literature were adjusted and applied. The most important lesson learned was that introducing requirements engineering can require a change of culture and not merely a change of process and technology. The change of culture firstly requires that product development personnel fully understand the reasons for documenting requirements from a customer’s point of view. Secondly, they must commit to defining and managing customer requirements systematically.