Scaling up requirements engineering - Exploring the challenges of increasing size and complexity in market-driven software development

Abstract

[Context & motivation] Growing software companies with increasing product complexity face the issue of how to scale up their Requirements Engineering (RE) practices. In market-driven requirements engineering, release planning and scoping decisions are increasingly challenging as the size and complexity increases. [Problem] This paper presents initial results of an on-going exploratory, qualitative investigation of three market-driven, industrial cases with the objective of increasing our understanding of challenges in scaling up requirements engineering and how these challenges are addressed by the studied companies. [Results] Through 13 interviews in three companies, requirements engineering scalability issues are explored related to scoping and the structure of RE artifacts. [Contribution] The main contribution are findings related to increasing RE scale based on interpretations of the experienced interviewees' views. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.