An Industrial Case Study on Measuring the Quality of the Requirements Scoping Process

TL;DR

This paper presents an industrial case study on measuring the quality of requirements scoping processes, offering new metrics and insights to improve decision making in requirements management.

Contribution

It introduces a set of metrics for assessing requirements scoping quality based on an interview study in an embedded systems company.

Findings

Identified gaps in current requirements management metrics

Proposed new metrics for measuring scoping quality

Provided practical insights for implementing measurement programs

Abstract

Decision making and requirements scoping occupy central roles in helping to develop products that are demanded by the customers and ensuring company strategies are accurately realized in product scope. Many companies experience continuous and frequent scope changes and fluctuations but struggle to measure the phenomena and correlate the measurement to the quality of the requirements process. We present the results from an exploratory interview study among 22 participants working with requirements management processes at a large company that develops embedded systems for a global market. Our respondents shared their opinions about the current set of requirements management process metrics as well as what additional metrics they envisioned as useful. We present a set of metrics that describe the quality of the requirements scoping process. The findings provide practical insights that can be used as input when introducing new measurement programs for requirements management and decision making.