A Case Study on Artefact-based RE Improvement in Practice

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the ArtREPI artefact-based requirements engineering improvement approach through a case study, highlighting its benefits in aligning RE with organizational culture and its limitations in efficiency.

Contribution

It provides an industrial case study analysis of ArtREPI, demonstrating its applicability and discussing its benefits and limitations in practice.

Findings

ArtREPI aligns RE with organizational culture.

It may reduce efficiency due to extensive stakeholder discussions.

Further longitudinal studies are needed.

Abstract

Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called \emph{ArtREPI}) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation.