The various influences in the processes and application domains make requirements engineering (RE) inherently complex and difficult to implement. In general, we have two options for establishing an RE approach: We can either establish an activity-based RE approach, or we can establish an artefact-based one where project participants concentrate on the RE artefacts rather than on the way of creating them. While a number of activity-based RE approaches have been proposed in recent years, we have gained much empirical evidence and experiences about the advantages of the artefact-based paradigm for RE. However, artefact orientation is still a young paradigm with various interpretations and practical manifestations whereby we need a clear understanding of its basic concepts and a consolidated and evaluated view on the paradigm. In this article, we contribute an artefact-based approach to RE [artefact model for domain-independent RE (AMDiRE)] that emerges from 6 years of experiences in fundamental and evidence-based research. To this end, we first discuss the basic notion of artefact orientation and its evolution in recent years. We briefly introduce a set of artefact-based RE models we developed in industrial research cooperations for different application domains and show their empirical evaluations and their dissemination into academia and practice, eventually leading to the AMDiRE approach. We conclude with a discussion of experiences we made during the development and different industrial evaluations, and lessons learnt.
is based on the idea of providing an RE reference model as an ordered set of activities and methods, each defining procedures and techniques for a particular purpose @cite_50 , from which project participants can select the appropriate one to design their project-specific RE process. Each activity, e.g. how to apply use cases @cite_6 , is performed by a particular role that creates the corresponding artefact type, e.g. the requirements specification. Each of those techniques is then placed into a particular sequence of application and used to specify the RE results @cite_41 .
@cite_41 @cite_6 @cite_50
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[Background:] Nowadays, industries are facing the problem that the Requirements Engineering (RE) process is highly volatile, since it depends on project influences from the customer's domain or from process models used. Artefact-based approaches promise to provide guidance in the creation of consistent artefacts in volatile project environments, because these approaches concentrate on the artefacts and their dependencies, instead of prescribing processes. Yet missing, however, is empirical evidence on the advantages of applying artefact-based RE approaches in real projects. [Aim:] We developed a customisable artefact-based RE approach for the domain of business information systems. Our goal is to investigate the advantages and limitations of applying this customisable approach in an industrial context. [Method:] We conduct a case study with our artefact-based RE approach and its customisation procedure. For this, we apply it at a software development project at Siemens following the steps of the customisation procedure. We assess our approach in direct comparison with the previously used RE approach considering possible improvements in the process and in the quality of the produced artefacts. [Results:] We show that our approach is flexible enough to respond to the individual needs in the analysed project environment. Although the approach is not rated to be more productive, we find an improvement in the syntactic and the semantic quality of the created artefacts. [Conclusions:] We close a gap in the RE literature by giving empirical evidence on the advantages of artefact orientation in RE in an industrial setting. In the context of reverse-engineering project we designed a use-case specification recovery technique for legacy information systems. With our technique, we can recover the alternative flows of each use-case of the system. It is based on a dynamic (i.e. runtime) analysis of the working of the system using execution traces. But "traditional" execution trace format do not contain enough information for this approach to work. Then we designed a new execution trace format together with the associated tool to get the program's dynamic decision tree corresponding to each of the use-case scenario. These trees are then processed to find the possible variants from the main scenario of each use-case. In this paper we first present our approach to the use-case specification recovery technique and the new trace format we designed. Then the decision tree compression technique is showed with a feasibility study. The contribution of the paper is our approach to the recovery of legacy systems' use-case, the new trace format and the decision tree processing technique. Requirements Engineering (RE) processes are highly volatile due to dependencies on customers' capabilities or used process models, both complicating a standardised RE process. A promising solution is given by artefactorientation that emphasises the results rather than dictating a strict development process. At such a basis one is able to incorporate domain-specific methods for producing artefacts without having to take into account the variability of process definitions. Although artefacts are known to support customisable development processes, there still is no common agreement about the structure and semantics of artefact-based methodologies. In this paper we discuss different interpretations of the term artefact considering aspects like process integration capabilities and necessities within individual project environments. We contribute a meta model for artefact-orientation that is inferred from two RE models elaborated within industrial cooperation projects of our research group. We conclude with a discussion of performed case studies and ongoing work. Abstract Context For many years, we have observed industry struggling in defining a high quality requirements engineering (RE) and researchers trying to understand industrial expectations and problems. Although we are investigating the discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, they still do not allow for empirical generalisations. Objective To lay an empirical and externally valid foundation about the state of the practice in RE, we aim at a series of open and reproducible surveys that allow us to steer future research in a problem-driven manner. Method We designed a globally distributed family of surveys in joint collaborations with different researchers and completed the first run in Germany. The instrument is based on a theory in the form of a set of hypotheses inferred from our experiences and available studies. We test each hypothesis in our theory and identify further candidates to extend the theory by correlation and Grounded Theory analysis. Results In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from Germany with participants from 58 companies. The results reveal, for example, a tendency to improve RE via internally defined qualitative methods rather than relying on normative approaches like CMMI. We also discovered various RE problems that are statistically significant in practice. For instance, we could corroborate communication flaws or moving targets as problems in practice. Our results are not yet fully representative but already give first insights into current practices and problems in RE, and they allow us to draw lessons learnt for future replications. Conclusion Our results obtained from this first run in Germany make us confident that the survey design and instrument are well-suited to be replicated and, thereby, to create a generalisable empirical basis of RE in practice.