Exploring Issues in Agile Requirements Engineering in the South African Software Industry

Abstract

Issues of the agile requirements engineering (ARE) process are abundant and pervasive throughout software projects. The aim of this study was to determine common issues experienced in agile requirements engineering in the South African software industry and identify tools and frameworks to mitigate risks emanating from such problems. This includes finding out how much value software practitioners put in the agile principles of the Agile Manifesto. This study was essentially quantitative. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect required data which was then subjected to exploratory data analysis, a tool for statistical analysis. The results suggest that software practitioners have a strong penchant for principles of the Agile Manifesto. A detailed baseline of issues in agile requirements engineering was created along with a set of recommended tools and techniques used in the software industry. And developers are divergent on the idea of non-functional requirements integration which is vital for software quality.

Investigating Agile Requirements Engineering Practices in the South African Software Development Market

“…According to Schön in [2] in Agile, RE processes such as inception stage, elicitation stage, elaboration stage, negotiation stage, specification stage and validation stage are not clearly separated. Kassab in [15] and Sebega and Mnkandla in [10] were in agreement with this finding. Classical activities are merged and conducted iteratively in the South African Agile RE practice [10].…”

“…Kassab in [15] and Sebega and Mnkandla in [10] were in agreement with this finding. Classical activities are merged and conducted iteratively in the South African Agile RE practice [10]. In Agile, RE is conducted just-in-time with little design upfront.…”

“…Requirements elicitation, the first stage, comprises of problem solving, negotiation and specification [10]. Requirements are elicited through focus group sessions, interviews, brainstorming, questionnaires, discourse analysis and ethnography.…”

“…Prototyping is another wellknown strategy used to identify and determine the requirements from the customer perspective. Requirements consistency, variability, list size and complexity derived from the elicitation stage can hinder Agile RE [10].…”

“…Researchers agree that there is a lack of empirical studies on how companies are conducting RE in Agile Software Development and much more research is required in this critical area [4,8,9,10]. In order to close the research gap, there is a need to conduct an in-depth analysis of Agile RE practices to assess their impact on the development of high quality software apps that are safe to use.…”