Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called ) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation.
@cite_16 , we first introduced the basic concepts of ArtREPI and its design science principles. Since then, we realised our approach using the EPF Composer as a means of a technical validation and made all material (models, process documentation, document templates, and evaluation instruments) publicly available @cite_18 to support the dissemination. In a previous short paper @cite_9 , we then briefly reported on initial experiences from an ongoing case study. In the paper at hands, we report on the by now completed case study in detail including the case study design, the results containing a second case, and the implications the results have.
@cite_9 @cite_18 @cite_16
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Requirements engineering process improvement (REPI) has gained much attention in research and practice. Most REPI approaches are of solution-driven and activity-based nature. They focus on the assessment of company-specific RE reference models against an external norm of best practices, and they propagate an improvement by forecasting the adaptation of the processes and methods in the RE reference model towards that norm. In recent years, we could develop a first problem-driven RE improvement approach that supports an improvement against individual goals and problems of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the RE artefacts (named ArtREPI). In this short paper, we briefly illustrate our resulting approach and report on our initial experiences from ongoing empirical evaluations in practice. We conclude with a summary of planned next steps. The importance of continuously improving requirements engineering (RE) has been recognised for many years. Similar to available software process improvement approaches, most RE improvement approaches focus on a normative and solution-driven assessment of companies rather than on a problem-driven RE improvement. The approaches dictate the implementation of a one-size-fits-all reference model without doing a proper problem investigation first, whereas the notion of quality factually depends on whether RE achieves company-specific goals. The approaches furthermore propagate process areas and methods, without proper awareness of the quality in the created artefacts on which the quality of many development phases rely. Little knowledge exists about how to conduct a problem-driven RE improvement that gives attention to the improvement of the artefacts. A promising solution is to start an improvement with an empirical investigation of the RE stakeholders, goals, and artefacts in the company to identify problems while abstracting from inherently complex processes. The RE improvement is then defined and implemented in joint action research workshops with the stakeholders to validate potential solutions while again concentrating on the artefacts. In this paper, we contribute an artefact-based, problem-driven RE improvement approach that emerged from a series of completed RE improvements. We discuss lessons learnt and present first result from an ongoing empirical evaluation at a German company. Our results suggest that our approach supports process engineers in a problem-driven RE improvement, but we need deeper examination of the resulting RE company standard, which is in scope of the final evaluation.