Abstract
[Context and motivation] Almost worldwide the software industry mainly consists of small and medium software enterprises. From a requirements engineering perspective these companies are poorly researched. [Problem] Though RE research is discovering SMEs as an interesting field, it is difficult to categorize and distinguish these companies sufficiently. This leads to a) weakly classified results of observational studies as well as field studies and empirical research and b) insufficient mappings between methodical improvements and the companies they can be applied to. Therefore, it is hard for researchers and enterprises to adopt RE state of the art to an enterprises environment. [Principal ideas] After defining the problem, initial ideas for attributes classifying SMEs are presented and a way for improving and clustering these attributes is shown. [Contribution] This paper raises an important problem statement for RE research and shows an initial way towards solving this problem.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Fayad, M., Laitinen, M., Ward, R.: Software Engineering in the Small. Communications of the ACM 43(3), 115–118 (2000)
Aranda, J., Easterbrook, S.M., Wilson, G.: Requirements in the wild: How small companies do it. In: Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2007), Delhi, India (2007)
Jantunen, S.: The benefit of being small: Exploring market-driven requirements engineering practices in five organizations. In: Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on RE in Small Companies (RESC), [4], pp. 131–140 (2010)
Bürsner, S., Dörr, J., Gehlert, A., Herrmann, A., Herzwurm, G., Janzen, D., Merten, T., Pietsch, W., Schmid, K., Schneider, K., Thurimella, A.K. (eds.): 16th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. Proceedings of the Workshops CreaRE, PLREQ, RePriCo and RESC 2010. ICB Research Report 40, University of Duisburg-Essen (2010)
Nikula, U., Sajeniemi, J., Kalvianen, H.: A state-of-the-practice survey on requirements engineering in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Telecom business research center lappeenranta research report 1, Lappeenrata University of Technology (2000)
Kamsties, E., Hörmann, K., Schlich, M.: Requirements engineering in small and medium enterprises. Requirements Engineering 3, 84–90 (1998)
Olsson, T., Dörr, J., König, T., Ehresmann, M.: A flexible and pragmatic requirements engineering framework for SME. In: Proceedings: Methods, Techniques and Tools to Support Situation-Specific Requirements Engineering Processes, pp. 1–12 (2005)
Hardiman, S.: Redest – 14 best practice SME experiments with innovative requirements gathering techniques. In: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Joint International Conference on Requirements Engineering, p. 191. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2002)
Pino, F.J., García, F., Piattini, M.: Software process improvement in small and medium software enterprises: a systematic review. Software Quality Journal 16(2), 237–261 (2008)
European Commission. The new SME definition. User guide and model declaration, pp. 1–52 (2008), http://www.ec.europa.eu/enterprise/enterprise_policy/sme_definition/sme_user_guide.pdf
Aranda, J.: Playing to the strengths of small organizations. In: Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on RE in Small Companies (RESC), [4], pp. 141–144 (2010)
IEEE Computer Society. Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). Angela Burgess, EUA (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Merten, T., Lauenroth, K., Bürsner, S. (2011). Towards a New Understanding of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Requirements Engineering Research. In: Berry, D., Franch, X. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6606. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19858-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19858-8_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19857-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19858-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)