An Empirical Study on Decision making for Quality Requirements

TL;DR

This study investigates how quality requirements are handled in scope decisions within a company, revealing challenges in explicitly addressing quality aspects and proposing a strategic and tactical decision process to improve outcomes.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of scope decision processes for quality requirements and proposes a structured approach to improve decision-making and stakeholder involvement.

Findings

Quality features are only 4.41% of all features handled.

Product line phase influences quality feature prevalence.

External stakeholders and upfront analysis lead to longer lead-times.

Abstract

[Context] Quality requirements are important for product success yet often handled poorly. The problems with scope decision lead to delayed handling and an unbalanced scope. [Objective] This study characterizes the scope decision process to understand influencing factors and properties affecting the scope decision of quality requirements. [Method] We studied one company's scope decision process over a period of five years. We analyzed the decisions artifacts and interviewed experienced engineers involved in the scope decision process. [Results] Features addressing quality aspects explicitly are a minor part (4.41%) of all features handled. The phase of the product line seems to influence the prevalence and acceptance rate of quality features. Lastly, relying on external stakeholders and upfront analysis seems to lead to long lead-times and an insufficient quality requirements scope. [Conclusions] There is a need to make quality mode explicit in the scope decision process. We propose a scope decision process at a strategic level and a tactical level. The former to address long-term planning and the latter to cater for a speedy process. Furthermore, we believe it is key to balance the stakeholder input with feedback from usage and market in a more direct way than through a long plan-driven process.