A Study about the Knowledge and Use of Requirements Engineering Standards in Industry

• The use of standards is considered a vital part of any engineering discipline. So one could expect that standards play an important role in Requirements Engineering (RE) as well. However, little is known about the actual knowledge and use of RE-related standards in industry. <i>Objective</i>. In this article, we investigate to which ex-tent standards and related artifacts such as templates or guidelines are known and used by RE practitioners. <i>Method</i>. To this end, we have conducted an online survey. We could analyze the replies from 90 RE practitioners using a combination of closed and open-text questions. <i>Results</i>. Our results indicate that the knowledge and use of standards and related artifacts in RE may be less widespread than one might expect from an engineering perspective. For example, about 45% of the respondents working as requirements engineers or business analysts do not know at least one of the two core standards in RE. Participants in our study mostly use standards rather by personal decision than imposed by their company, customer, or regulator. Beyond insufficient knowledge, we also found cultural and organizational factors impeding the widespread adoption of standards in RE. <i>Conclusions</i>. Overall, our results provide empirically informed insights into the actual use of standards and related artifacts in RE practice and indirectly about the value that the current standards create for RE practitioners. IEEE

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Guideline

Guidelines

IEC Standards

Industries

ISO Standards

Requirements engineering

Software engineering

Standard

Standards

Survey

Template

Computer software

Actual use

Business analysts

Engineering disciplines

Engineering perspective

Online surveys

Open text

Organizational factors

Personal decision

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)