Human error management in requirements engineering: Should we fix the people, the processes, or the environment?

Abstract

Context: Software development is a human-centric activity and hence vulnerable to human error. Human errors are errors in the human thought process. To ensure software quality, it is important for practitioners to understand how to manage these human errors. Organizations often introduce changes into the requirements engineering process to either prevent human errors from occurring or to mitigate the harm caused when those errors do occur. While there are studies on human error management in other disciplines, research on the prevention and mitigation of human errors in software engineering, and requirements engineering specifically, are limited. The current studies in software engineering do not provide strong results about the types of changes that are most effective in requirements engineering. Objective: The goal of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of human error prevention and mitigation strategies based on data gathered from requirements engineering professionals. Methods: We performed a qualitative analysis of data from two practitioner surveys on requirements engineering practices to identify and classify strategies for the prevention and mitigation of human errors. Results: We organized the human error management strategies into a taxonomy based on whether the changes primarily affect People, Processes, or the Environment. Inside each of these high-level categories, we further organized the strategies into low-level classes. The results show more than 50% of the reported strategies require a change in Process, 23% require a change in Environment, 21% require a change in People, with the remaining 5% too ambiguous to classify. In addition, more than 50% of the strategies focus on Management activities of requirements engineering. Conclusion: The Human Error Management Taxonomy provides a systematic classification and organization of strategies for prevention and mitigation of human errors in requirements engineering. This systematic organization provides a foundation upon which research can build.