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What do we know about requirements management in software ecosystems?

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Abstract

Among the activities in requirements engineering (RE), requirements management ensures that requirements are tracked throughout their life cycle, changes are controlled, and inconsistencies are corrected. Requirements management has become increasingly critical in new ways of developing software and emerging contexts such as software ecosystems (SECO). The changing nature of the SECO introduces complexity in requirements management and results in varied flows of emergent requirements, making managing requirements in SECO challenging. Hence, understanding how requirements management is performed in SECO can help requirements managers improve their practices. This work aims to characterize requirements management in SECO. We have conducted a systematic mapping study (SMS) to achieve this goal. We selected 29 studies using a hybrid search strategy (database search and snowballing). We defined nine characteristics of requirements management in SECO that differentiate it from requirements management in traditional software development. We identified four types of approaches to support requirements management in SECO: tool, method, model, and practice. We found that only three selected studies present an assessment of their approaches. Finally, we characterize requirements management in SECO as an open, informal, collaborative, and decentralized process involving multi-party actors susceptible to power relations.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the ZENODO repository, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8131745.

Notes

  1. https://dl.acm.org/.

  2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/.

  3. https://www.engineeringvillage.com/.

  4. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/.

  5. https://www.scopus.com/.

  6. https://www.webofscience.com/.

  7. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.

  8. https://conf.researchr.org/track/icse-2024/icse-2024-research-track.

  9. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8131745.

  10. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8131745.

  11. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8131745.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. The authors thank UNIRIO (PPQ 03/2022 and 03/2023) and FAPERJ (Proc. 211.583/2019) for partial support to the work. The third author would like to thank the FAPEMA (Process BEPP-01608/21; UNIVERSAL00745/19).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Paulo Malcher & Rodrigo Santos

  2. Federal Rural University of Amazônia, Capitão Poço, PA, Brazil

    Paulo Malcher & Eduardo Silva

  3. Federal University of Maranhão, São Luís, MA, Brazil

    Davi Viana

Authors
  1. Paulo Malcher
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  2. Eduardo Silva
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  3. Davi Viana
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  4. Rodrigo Santos
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Correspondence to Paulo Malcher.

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Appendix A: List of selected studies

Appendix A: List of selected studies

ID

Title

References

S1

‘State of the Art’ in Using Agile Methods for Embedded Systems Development

Srinivasan et al. [89]

S2

Specification and Analysis of Requirements Negotiation Strategy in Software Ecosystems

Fricker [32]

S3

The metropolis model and its implications for the engineering of software ecosystems

Kazman and Chen [49]

S4

Towards Understanding Requirements Engineering in IT Ecosystems

Knauss et al. [52]

S5

Analysing Requirements Negotiation in Software Ecosystems with Multi-Agent Systems Techniques

Valença et al. [92]

S6

On the Impact of Software Ecosystems in Requirements Communication and Management

Santos and Werner [80]

S7

Requirements Negotiation Model: A Social Oriented Approach for Software Ecosystems Evolution

Valença [94]

S8

Software Ecosystems: From Software Product Management to Software Platform Management

Jansen et al. [45]

S9

Competition and Collaboration in Requirements Engineering: A Case Study of an Emerging Software Ecosystem

Valença et al. [95]

S10

Innovation Processes in Business Ecosystems Creating a Common Understanding by Requirements

Harland et al. [39]

S11

Using Social Networks to Support Software Ecosystems Comprehension and Evolution

Santos et al. [77]

S12

Cross-Organizational Challenges of Requirements Engineering in the AUTOSAR Ecosystem: An Exploratory Case Study

Soltani and Knauss [87]

S13

How Firms Adapt and Interact in Open Source Ecosystems: Analyzing Stakeholder Influence and Collaboration Patterns

Linåker et al. [58]

S14

Requirements Analysis and Management for Benefiting Openness

Linåker and Wnuk [62]

S15

Understanding How Power Influences Business and Requirements Decisions in Software Ecosystems

Valença and Alves [93]

S16

A Survey of Practitioners Use of Open Innovation

Fernandez and Svensson [28]

S17

Continuous clarification and emergent requirements flows in open-commercial software ecosystems

Knauss et al. [53]

S18

Ecosystems effects on software-consuming organizations an experience report on two observational studies

Santos et al. [81]

S19

Motivating the contributions An Open Innovation perspective on what to share as Open Source Software

Linåker et al. [63]

S20

Towards Ubiquitous RE: A Perspective on Requirements Engineering in the Era of Digital Transformation

Villela et al. [97]

S21

Scaling Agile Beyond Organizational Boundaries - Coordination Challenges in Software Ecosystems

Figalist et al. [29]

S22

Ubiquitous Requirements Engineering: A Paradigm Shift That Affects Everyone

Villela et al. [98]

S23

A focus area maturity model for software ecosystem governance

Jansen [44]

S24

A method for analyzing stakeholders’ influence on an open source software ecosystems requirements engineering process

Linåker et al. [59]

S25

Identifying Key Stakeholders as Part of Requirements Elicitation in Software Ecosystems

Lewellen [54]

S26

Open CrowdRE Challenges in Software Ecosystems

Johnson et al. [47]

S27

Public Sector Platforms going Open: Creating and Growing an Ecosystem with Open Collaborative Development

Linåker and Runeson [60]

S28

A comprehensive approach to identifying key stakeholders in complicated software ecosystems

Lewellen [55]

S29

Challenges and Strategies for Managing Requirements Selection in Software Ecosystems

Damian et al. [24]

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Malcher, P., Silva, E., Viana, D. et al. What do we know about requirements management in software ecosystems?. Requirements Eng 28, 567–593 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-023-00407-w

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