Communication artifacts for requirements engineering

Abstract

The current study aims to improve the requirements engineering (RE) communication, as often times projects fail due to poorly specified or misunderstood requirements. We use design science methods to build and evaluate a conceptual model which can add value to managers by offering them a set of guidelines and best practices for facilitating the RE communication. We did a qualitative study to investigate what the criteria are for selecting communication artifacts and we discovered that organizational culture plays a key role in this process. We demonstrate that the used artifacts need to adequately reflect the dynamic and intensity of the communication. Finally, we extend the RE process by adding two transitional phases to avoid requirements slipping through the gaps. Our findings indicate that such transitions are more distinct in traditional waterfall organizations and less salient in agile companies. The current study approaches the RE communication process from a design science perspective which adds more knowledge on the topic and addresses some existing issues leading to project failure.