Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems

TL;DR

This paper provides empirically-based guidelines for preventing critical requirements engineering problems tailored to organizations' size and process models, derived from survey data across diverse companies.

Contribution

It offers the first empirically-derived, context-specific guidelines for RE problem prevention based on extensive survey analysis.

Findings

Identified critical RE problems, causes, and mitigation actions.

Organized insights by organization size and process model.

Proposed preliminary guidelines for different organizational contexts.

Abstract

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.