The use of controlled vocabularies in requirements engineering activities: a protocol for a systematic literature review

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed protocol for conducting systematic literature reviews in requirements engineering, emphasizing the importance of well-defined, adaptable plans to improve review quality and validity.

Contribution

It provides a validated, formal protocol for systematic reviews in requirements engineering based on analysis of existing guidelines and literature.

Findings

Most reviews lack detailed protocols or have weak reporting.

There is a significant lack of tool support for formal protocol development.

Balancing protocol flexibility and adherence is challenging but essential.

Abstract

Context: The Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) paradigm and the planning phase of a systematic literature review. Objective: A protocol to do a systematic literature review with detailed information about the processes suggested by several guidelines in the field of evidence-based software engineering. Method: An analisys of recent systematic literature reviews published in world leading journals, plus the use of two renowned guidelines and a textbook to sinthetise a formal plan (the protocol). Results: The validated protocol Conclusions: We found that most of the published systematic reviews lack on reporting the protocol, or it is weak. There is a lack of tool support to develop formal protocols. Although a protocol, like a plan, must have the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen situations, its objective is that the actual activities should resemble as far as possible of those already planned. Therefore, it is a difficult balance to achieve and, researchers must be careful not to introduce alterations that could become threats to the validity of the entire work.