Management of quality requirements in agile and rapid software development: A systematic mapping study

Abstract

Context: Quality requirements (QRs) describe the desired quality of software, and they play an important role in the success of software projects. In agile software development (ASD), QRs are often ill-defined and not well addressed due to the focus on quickly delivering functionality. Rapid software development (RSD) approaches (e.g., continuous delivery and continuous deployment), which shorten delivery times, are more prone to neglect QRs. Despite the significance of QRs in both ASD and RSD, there is limited synthesized knowledge on their management in those approaches.Objective: This study aims to synthesize state-of-the-art knowledge about QR management in ASD and RSD, focusing on three aspects: bibliometric, strategies, and challenges. Research method: Using a systematic mapping study with a snowballing search strategy, we identified and structured the literature on QR management in ASD and RSD. Results: We found 156 primary studies: 106 are empirical studies, 16 are experience reports, and 34 are theoretical studies. Security and performance were the most commonly reported QR types. We identified various QR management strategies: 74 practices, 43 methods, 13 models, 12 frameworks, 11 advices, 10 tools, and 7 guidelines. Additionally, we identified 18 categories and 4 non-recurring challenges of managing QRs. The limited ability of ASD to handle QRs, time constraints due to short iteration cycles, limitations regarding the testing of QRs and neglect of QRs were the top categories of challenges. Conclusion: Management of QRs is significant in ASD and is becoming important in RSD. This study identified research gaps, such as the need for more tools and guidelines, lightweight QR management strategies that fit short iteration cycles, investigations of the link between QRs challenges and technical debt, and extension of empirical validation of existing strategies to a wider context. It also synthesizes QR management strategies and challenges, which may be useful for practitioners.

Documentation of Quality Requirements in Agile Software Development

“…Regarding their capability for rapid delivery of working software and responding to changing requirements, ASD approaches have been popular and widely adopted in the software industry [29]. Nevertheless, studies reveal that ASD approaches have limitations regarding the specification and documentation of QRs [2,7,9,14,20]. For instance, the capability of ASD user stories to specify and document QRs is limited [7,9,20,22].…”

“…Alsaqaf et al [2] found that ASD teams face trouble in writing Definition of Done (DoD) of QRs and that the lack of understanding of QRs created a challenge for writing the DoDs. Behutiye et al [7], identified that documenting QRs improperly (e.g. unclear specifications, outdated and missing QRs documentation) is one of the challenges of managing QRs in ASD.…”

Quality-Aware Rapid Software Development Project: The Q-Rapids Project

“…Functional requirements are usually specified as user stories in a product backlog and prioritized using a customer perspective. This approach tends to naturally favor functional requirements over QRs [10]. As a result, quality aspects such as system security, performance or usability are often compromised [7].…”

“…For example, technical debt (TD) has become a popular concept in Agile software development owing to the specific characteristics of ASD that make it prone to incurring TD [9]. Moreover, in a software development approach driven by functionality, the way in which QRs should be managed is unclear [10]. In this sense, the technical solutions provided by Q-Rapids (the Q-Rapids data gathering and analysis engine -Section 3, and the Q-Rapids dashboard -Section 5) aim to complement Agile and Rapid software development processes by incorporating three key process characteristics: quality awareness, data-driven decision making and rapid (lightweight) development.…”

Strategies to manage quality requirements in agile software development: a multiple case study

“…Together with the fact that an increasing number of companies, regardless of size, are adopting agile methods (Rodriguez et al 2012;VersionOne Inc. 2016), it is important to understand how QRs are or should be managed in ASD. Recent secondary studies on requirements engineering (RE) in ASD have highlighted the importance of QRs and have emphasized that managing QRs in the context of ASD is both challenging and understudied (Schön et al 2017;Heck and Zaidman 2016;Heikkilä et al 2015;Inayat et al 2015;Magües et al 2016;Alsaqaf et al 2017;Behutiye et al 2019). Some of these studies-for example, Inayat et al (2015) and Alsaqaf et al (2017)-also concluded that there is a lack of empirical evidence on how QRs are managed in ASD.…”