A Study about the Knowledge and Use of Requirements Engineering Standards in Industry

TL;DR

This study investigates the awareness and application of Requirements Engineering standards among industry practitioners, revealing limited knowledge and organizational barriers that hinder widespread adoption of standards in RE practice.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on the actual use of RE standards in industry, highlighting gaps between standards' intended role and practitioners' practices.

Findings

47% of practitioners are unaware of ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148

Standards are mainly used based on personal choice

Organizational and cultural factors impede standards adoption

Abstract

Context: The use of standards is considered a vital part of any engineering discipline. So one could expect that standards play an important role in Requirements Engineering (RE) as well. However, little is known about the actual knowledge and use of RE-related standards in industry. Objective: In this article, we investigate to which extent standards and related artifacts such as templates or guidelines are known and used by RE practitioners. Method: To this end, we have conducted a questionnaire-based online survey. We could analyze the replies from 90 RE practitioners using a combination of closed and open-text questions. Results: Our results indicate that the knowledge and use of standards and related artifacts in RE is less widespread than one might expect from an engineering perspective. For example, about 47% of the respondents working as requirements engineers or business analysts do not know the core standard in RE, ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148. Participants in our study mostly use standards by personal decision rather than being imposed by their respective company, customer, or regulator. Beyond insufficient knowledge, we also found cultural and organizational factors impeding the widespread adoption of standards in RE. Conclusions: Overall, our results provide empirically informed insights into the actual use of standards and related artifacts in RE practice and - indirectly - about the value that the current standards create for RE practitioners.