Requirements engineering: Best practice

Abstract

Many software solutions have failed because they did not meet stakeholder needs. In response to this problem a massive amount of techniques were developed to elicit stakeholder needs, to analyze the implications of these needs on the software, to specify proposed software products, and to check acceptance of these proposals. However, many of these techniques did not become industrial practice because they were not practicable or ineffective when used in real-world projects. To obtain an overview of what common practice is and to understand which techniques reflect best practice because they are particularly effective, we have surveyed a large number of industry projects. Based on 419 valid answers, this chapter gives an overview of commonly used requirements engineering techniques. It also shows which of the techniques, when used in a software project, correlate with requirements engineering success. The chapter concludes with recommendations for software projects and future research to improve requirements engineering practice.