Industrial Practices on Requirements Reuse: An Interview-Based Study

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Requirements reuse has been proposed as a key asset for requirements engineers to efficiently elicit, validate and document software requirements and, as a consequence, obtain requirements specifications of better quality through more effective engineering processes. [Question/problem] Regardless the impact requirements reuse could have in software projects’ success and efficiency, the requirements engineering community has published very few studies reporting the way in which this activity is conducted in industry. [Principal ideas/results] In this paper, we present the results of an interview-based study involving 24 IT professionals on whether they reuse requirements or not and how. Some kind of requirements reuse is carried out by the majority of respondents, being organizational and project-related factors the main drivers. Quality requirements are the type most reused. The most common strategy is find-copy-paste-adapt. Respondents agreed that requirements reuse is beneficial, especially for project-related reasons. The most stated challenge to overcome in requirements reuse is related to the domain of the project and the development of a completely new system. [Contribution] With this study, we contribute to the state of the practice in the reuse of requirements by showing how real organizations carry out this process and the factors that influence it.