DUFICE: Guidelines for a Lightweight Management of Requirements Knowledge

Abstract

Working with requirements is a knowledge-intensive task. During the elicitation, comprehension, or management of requirements, practitioners often consume and produce additional information such as domain knowledge, rationale, requirements dependencies, “who knows what”, or how-to’s. However, current requirements engineering processes and tools lack a systematic support for the management of knowledge about requirements. This makes it difficult for practitioners to capture and share such knowledge. This chapter summarises our experience on implementing a lightweight, pragmatic approach to capture and share requirements knowledge. We recommend practitioners to Draw a knowledge landscape, Use lightweight tools, Follow a simple iterative process, Interact with external communities, Capture tacit knowledge, and Establish a knowledge culture. We introduce these guidelines, report on motivating examples, and discuss how they can be applied successfully in practice.