Requirements engineering in practice: There is no requirements engineer position

Abstract

[Context and motivation] For the requirements engineering (RE) community it is clear that requirements engineering is a specific activity and role within software development. [Question/problem] However: What about practice? Is RE seen there as a separate role? What qualifications do practitioners see as critical for this task? [Principal ideas/results] 141 job advertisements from 2009 and 67 from 2012 were analysed statistically in order to find out how practice perceives and staffs RE: Which official job title do those persons have who do RE? Which further responsibilities do these persons have? Which qualifications are demanded? [Contribution] The studýs main results are: The position "requirements engineer" hardly exists. RE instead is done by consultants, software engineers, architects, developers and project managers, who additionally have an average of 3 further tasks. RE is no task for job beginners: 73% of the job advertisements wish or demand previous job experience. Further important qualifications are: 94% soft skills (the Top 3 soft skills are: capacity for teamwork, English language and communication skills), 76% demand knowledge with respect to the technology used, while only 34% mention RE knowledge. RE is most often combined with solution design (77% respectively 61%). © 2013 Springer-Verlag.