An instrument for measuring the maturity of requirements engineering process

Abstract

Requirements problems are widely acknowledged to have impact on the effectiveness of the software development process. In order to improve the requirements engineering (RE) process and to reduce requirements problems, Sommerville et al. [1] have developed a requirements maturity model. Literature shows that the measurement process, designed in this model, is very confused and can lead organizations to incorrect results. This is because the measurement process is ambiguous and no strategic and systematic approach is used to decide different scores for various RE practices. The objective of this paper is to propose a measurement instrument for Sommerville et al.'s model to effectively measure the maturity of the RE process. The main purpose of proposing this measurement instrument is to develop better ways to assist practitioners in effectively measuring the maturity of the RE process. This instrument provides a very practical structure with which to measure the maturity of the RE process. I have tested this instrument in one case study where only one category of RE process, i.e. 'requirements elicitation' was used as an exemplar. The case study results show that the measurement instrument has potential to assist practitioners in effectively measuring the maturity of 'requirements elicitation' category of the RE process. Thus, I recommend organizations trial this instrument for other categories of RE process in order to further evaluate its effectiveness in the domain of RE process. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.