Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

An Industrial Case Study on Measuring the Quality of the Requirements Scoping Process

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10027))

  • 5384 Accesses

Abstract

Decision making and requirements scoping occupy central roles in helping to develop products that are demanded by the customers and ensuring company strategies are accurately realized in product scope. Many companies experience continuous and frequent scope changes and fluctuations but struggle to measure the phenomena and correlate the measurement to the quality of the requirements process. We present the results from an exploratory interview study among 22 participants working with requirements management processes at a large company that develops embedded systems for a global market. Our respondents shared their opinions about the current set of requirements management process metrics as well as what additional metrics they envisioned as useful. We present a set of metrics that describe the quality of the requirements scoping process. The findings provide practical insights that can be used as input when introducing new measurement programs for requirements management and decision making.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ambriola, V., Gervasi, V.: Process metrics for requirements analysis. In: Conradi, R. (ed.) EWSPT 2000. LNCS, vol. 1780, pp. 90–95. Springer, Heidelberg (2000). doi:10.1007/BFb0095017

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Costello, R.J., Liu, D.-B.: Metrics for requirements engineering. J. Syst. Softw. 29(1), 39–63 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Feyh, M., Petersen, K.: Lean software development measures and indicators - a systematic mapping study. In: Fitzgerald, B., Conboy, Kieran, Power, K., Valerdi, R., Morgan, L., Stol, K.-J. (eds.) LESS 2013. LNBIP, vol. 167, pp. 32–47. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-44930-7_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Hood, C., Wiedemann, S., Fichtinger, S., Pautz, U.: Requirements Management: The Interface Between Requirements Development and All Other Systems Engineering Processes. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Höst, M., Regnell, B., Natt och Dag, J., Nedstam, J., Nyberg, C.: Exploring bottlenecks in market-driven requirements management processes with discrete event simulation. J. Syst. Softw. 59(3), 323–332 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Landis, J.R., Koch, G.G.: The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33, 159–174 (1977)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Mujtaba, S., Feldt, R., Petersen, K.: Waste and lead time reduction in a software product customization process with value stream maps. In: 21st Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), pp. 139–148 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Petersen, K., Wohlin, C.: Measuring the flow in lean software development. Softw. Pract. Exp. 41, 975–996 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Pohl, K., Böckle, G., van der Linden, F.J.: Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles and Techniques. Springer, New York (2005)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Regnell, B., Svensson, R.B., Wnuk, K.: Can we beat the complexity of very large-scale requirements engineering? In: Paech, B., Rolland, C. (eds.) REFSQ 2008. LNCS, vol. 5025, pp. 123–128. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-69062-7_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Runeson, P., Höst, M., Rainer, A., Regnell, B.: Case Study Research in Software Engineering Guidelines and Examples. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken (2012)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  12. The interview instrument can be accessed at http://serg.cs.lth.se/fileadmin/serg/InterviewQuestions.pdf

  13. Wnuk, K., Gorschek, T., Callele, D., Karlsson, E.-A., Regnell, B., Ahlin, E.: Supporting scope tracking and visualization for very large-scale requirements engineering-utilizing FSC+, decision patterns, and atomic decision visualizations. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 42, 47–74 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Wnuk, K., Regnell, B., Karlsson, L.: What happened to our features? Visualization and understanding of scope change dynamics in a large-scale industrial setting. In: 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2009, pp. 89–98 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Wnuk, K., Pfahl, D., Callele, D., Karlsson, E.A.: How can open source software development help requirements management gain the potential of open innovation: an exploratory study. In: ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), pp. 271–279 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the IKNOWDM project from the Knowledge Foundation in Sweden (20150033).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Engineering Research Lab, Department of Software Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Krzysztof Wnuk

  2. SICS Swedish ICT AB, Lund, Sweden

    Markus Borg

  3. Department of Computer Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Sardar Muhammad Sulaman

Authors
  1. Krzysztof Wnuk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Markus Borg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sardar Muhammad Sulaman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Krzysztof Wnuk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Pekka Abrahamsson

  2. Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Andreas Jedlitschka

  3. and Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Anh Nguyen Duc

  4. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Michael Felderer

  5. Okayama Prefectural University, Soja, Japan

    Sousuke Amasaki

  6. Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland

    Tommi Mikkonen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Wnuk, K., Borg, M., Sulaman, S. (2016). An Industrial Case Study on Measuring the Quality of the Requirements Scoping Process. In: Abrahamsson, P., Jedlitschka, A., Nguyen Duc, A., Felderer, M., Amasaki, S., Mikkonen, T. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10027. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_34

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_34

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49093-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49094-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics