The state-of-practice in requirements specification: an extended interview study at 12 companies

Abstract

Requirements specification is a core activity in the requirements engineering phase of a software development project. Researchers have contributed extensively to the field of requirements specification, but the extent to which their proposals have been adopted in practice remains unclear. We gathered evidence about the state of practice in requirements specification by focussing on the artefacts used in this activity, the application of templates or guidelines, how requirements are structured in the specification document, what tools practitioners use to specify requirements, and what challenges they face. We conducted an interview-based survey study involving 24 practitioners from 12 different Swedish IT companies. We recorded the interviews and analysed these recordings, primarily by using qualitative methods. Natural language constitutes the main specification artefact but is usually accompanied by some other type of instrument. Most requirements specifications use templates or guidelines, although they seldom follow any fixed standard. Requirements are always structured in the document according to the main functionalities of the system or to project areas or system parts. Different types of tools, including MS Office tools, are used, either individually or combined, in the compilation of requirements specifications. We also note that challenges related to the use of natural language (dealing with ambiguity, inconsistency, and incompleteness) are the most frequent challenges that practitioners face in the compilation of requirements specifications. These findings are contextualized in terms of demographic factors related to the individual interviewees, the organization they are affiliated with, and the project they selected to discuss during our interviews. A number of our findings have been previously reported in related studies. These findings show that, in spite of the large number of notations, models and tools proposed from academia for improving requirements specification, practitioners still mainly rely on plain natural language and general-purpose tool support. We expect more empirical studies in this area in order to better understand the reason of this low adoption of research results.

Barriers of Agile Requirements Engineering in the Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In ASD, team coordination is important (Alsaqaf et al, 2019;Schön et al, 2017). Problems in communication and insufficient coordination can lead to infeasibility of requirements (Franch et al, 2023). Therefore, effective communication between teams and their members should be prioritized to ensure the accurate and successful implementation of RE (Alsaqaf et al, 2017).…”

“…Lack of requirements traceability can lead to team confusion, difficulties in tracking back the changes in requirements and missing some requirements (Kasauli et al, 2021;Rizkiyah et al, 2020). Moreover, it may cause development inefficiencies and maintenance difficulties (Franch et al, 2023;Kasauli et al, 2021).…”

“…In RE, ambiguity is a major issue that is often raised (Franch et al, 2023). During sprint planning, the team frequently encounters difficulty due to a lack of clarity in specifying requirements (Nisyak et al, 2020;Rizkiyah et al, 2020).…”

“…Similarly, effective communication and interaction among team members are essential to ensure accurate Agile RE implementation. Insufficient team coordination may result in the impractical fulfillment of requirements (Franch et al, 2023). These may lead to increased rework in the subsequent sprint.…”

Requirements quality research: a harmonized theory, evaluation, and roadmap

“…Two further factors aggravate the effect. Firstly, natural language (NL), which is inherently ambiguous and, hence, prone to quality defects, remains the most commonly used syntax to specify requirements [41,96]. Secondly, the cost of removing quality defects scales the longer they remain undetected [8].…”