Investigating the impact of software requirements specification quality on project success

Abstract

Different Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) are hard to compare due to the uniqueness of the projects they were created in. Without such comparison, it is difficult to objectively determine if a project's SRS is good enough to serve as a foundation for project success. We define a quality model for SRS and derive required metrics using the Goal-Question-Metric approach. These metrics were applied in roughly 40 student's software projects. Based on this we find a quality threshold for project success. This paper contributes in three areas: Firstly, we present our quality model. It was derived from literature, and contributes to the discussion of how to objectively measure requirements quality. Secondly, we share our evaluation approach and our experiences measuring SRS quality. Others could profit, when planning to measure requirements quality. Finally, we present our findings and compare them to related studies in literature. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.