Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering

Agile Software Development (ASD) is becoming more popular in all fields of industry. For an agile transformation, organizations need to continuously improve their established approaches to Requirements Engineering (RE) as well as their approaches to software development. This is accompanied by some chal‐lenges in terms of agile RE. The main objective of this paper is to identify the most important challenges in agile RE industry has to face today. Therefore, we conducted an iterative expert judgement process with 26 experts in the field of ASD, comprising three complementary rounds. In sum, we identified 20 challenges in three rounds. Six of these challenges are defined as key challenges. Based on the results, we provide options for dealing with those key challenges by means of agile techniques and tools. The results show that the identified challenges are often not limited to ASD, but they rather refer to software development in general. Therefore, we can conclude that organ‐izations still struggle with agile transition and understanding agile values, in particular, in terms of stakeholder and user involvement.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

T-Reqs: Tool Support for Managing Requirements in Large-Scale Agile System Development

T-Reqs is a text-based requirements management solution based on the git version control system. It combines useful conventions, templates and helper scripts with powerful existing solutions from the git ecosystem and provides a working solution to address some known requirements engineering challenges in large-scale agile system development. Specifically, it allows agile cross-functional teams to be aware of requirements at system level and enables them to efficiently propose updates to those requirements. Based on our experience with T-Reqs, we i) relate known requirements challenges of large-scale agile system development to tool support; ii) list key requirements for tooling in such a context; and iii) propose concrete solutions for challenges.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proc. of 26th IEEE Int. Requirements Eng. Conf., Demo Track, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 201

Empirical Research on Customer Communication Challenges in the Companies Adopting Agile Practices

One of the most critical aspects of Software Development Process is the Requirements Engineering process and defining the correct and understandable requirements in Agile methodology. Hence, Requirements Engineering in agile directly effect the overall project success. This paper demonstrates a research study about the usage of Agile methods in the set of industrial companies located in Russia. The survey gives insights about different aspects of the method: communication challenges and issues arising during the Software Requirements Engineering phase in particular the challenges in the communication with the customers. To investigate these issues the paper presents an analysis of the state of the art done with the help of the research survey. The results of the interview sessions are summarized and the set of suggestions to overcome the challenges are proposed. 30 representatives from 20 different companies who are mainly Product owners and Product Managers participated in the surve y. As the results indicate, the communication is always a key challenge for the companies. The analysis of particular qualities of the communication field in the context of rapidly changing Software Development environment helped to define the outcomes related to the customer communicatio

Human factors in developing automated vehicles: A requirements engineering perspective

Automated Vehicle (AV) technology has evolved significantly both in complexity and impact and is expected to ultimately change urban transportation. Due to this evolution, the development of AVs challenges the current state of automotive engineering practice, as automotive companies increasingly include agile ways of working in their plan-driven systems engineering—or even transition completely to scaled-agile approaches. However, it is unclear how knowledge about human factors (HF) and technological knowledge related to the development of AVs can be brought together in a way that effectively supports today\u27s rapid release cycles and agile development approaches. Based on semi-structured interviews with ten experts from industry and two experts from academia, this qualitative, exploratory case study investigates the relationship between HF and AV development. The study reveals relevant properties of agile system development and HF, as well as the implications of these properties for integrating agile work, HF, and requirements engineering. According to the findings, which were evaluated in a workshop with experts from academia and industry, a culture that values HF knowledge in engineering is key. These results promise to improve the integration of HF knowledge into agile development as well as to facilitate HF research impact and time to market

RISKS OF REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING IN DISTRIBUTED AGILE INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

Tietojärjestelmäkehittämisen onnistumisen näkökulmasta yksi kriittisistä riskeistä on vaatimusmäärittelyvaihe. Vaatimusmäärittelyn tarkoituksena on löytää alkuperäinen tarve ja muuttaa se toteutettavaksi suunnitelmaksi. Viime vuosikymmeninä liiketoimintaympäristön muuttuessa myös vaatimusmäärittelyn toteuttaminen on muuttunut. Nykyään tietojärjestelmäkehittäminen tehdään usein ketterillä menetelmillä. Kehittäminen on yhä useammin hajautettua. Tämä yhtälö luo mielenkiintoisia asetelmia, kuten kommunikaation rooli, joka on keskeinen ketterässä kehittämisessä, mutta haaste hajautetussa ympäristössä. Tutkimusalue on ketterä tietojärjestelmäkehittäminen ja tarkemmin vaatimusmäärittelyn ja hajautetun ympäristön riskit. Hajautetun ketterän kehittämisen riskejä on tutkittu paljon ja tutkimuksia löytyy myös vaatimusmäärittelyn riskeistä ketterässä kehittämisessä. Kuitenkaan tutkimusta ei ole tehty hajautetun asetelman vaikutuksesta vaatimusmäärittelyyn ketterässä kehittämisessä. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tunnistaa ja ymmärtää haasteet, joita hajautettu asetelma ketterällä menetelmällä toteutetuissa projekteissa luo vaatimusmäärittelyyn. Lisäksi tunnistetut riskien pienentämisen keinot esitellään. Tutkimusmenetelmänä on käytetty integratiivista kirjallisuuskatsausta. Menetelmässä olemassa olevaa kirjallisuutta tutkitaan, jotta voidaan muodostaa uusi viitekehys aiheesta. Tutkimuksessa yhdistetään aiheet hajautettu kehittäminen ja vaatimusmäärittely hyödyntäen kyseistä menetelmää. Motivaatio tutkimukseen on syntynyt kirjoittajan ammatin ja ohjaajan tutkimuksen myötä. Tutkimuksen tuloksena muodostui synteesi, joka esittää vaatimusmäärittelyn ja hajautetun kehittämisen haasteet ketterän menetelmien projekteissa. Molemmissa tunnistetut haasteet ovat tasapaino minimaalisessa dokumentoinnissa, asiakkaan saatavuus, kustannusten, aikataulun ja laajuuden arviointi sekä koordinointi haasteet. Synteesissä käsitellään myös riskien pienentämisen keinoja tunnistetuille haasteille sekä hajautetun kehittämisen haasteita, jotka vaikuttavat muihin haasteisiin.One of the critical risk elements in information system development is requirements engineering phase where the original needs are transferred to plans to be implemented. Nature of requirements engineering has been changing due to changes in business environment in past decades. Today agile development methods are typical for information system development. In addition, development is often distributed. This context has interesting aspects such as communication that is a key in agile requirements engineering and a main challenge in distributed environment. The research area is agile information systems development and further requirements engineering and distributed environment risks. Risks of distributed agile development is mature field. Also, there are some studies about requirements engineering risks in agile development. However, there is low effort in research to examine more in detail the relation of distributed set-up and requirements engineering in agile development. The aim of this study is to identify and understand challenges of requirements engineering in distributed agile development. In addition, the study presents identified mitigation methods. Integrative literature review was used as a research method. The method bases on existing literature that is examined to form a new framework about the topic. Utilizing this method research streams of distributed development and requirements engineering were combined. Motivation for this study originates writer’s own interest due profession and instructor’s study. Synthesis was provided as a result. Common challenges for requirements engineering and distributed development in agile context were identified to be: Balance of minimal documentation, Customer availability, Cost, schedule and scope estimation and Coordination challenges. Also, mitigation methods for common challenges and impacting distributed challenges were analyzed and discussed in synthesis

Requirements Engineering for Globally Distributed Teams using Scaled Agile Framework

As large organizations are striving to deliver software at a faster pace and to keep up with the latest trends, they are in a transformation stage of adopting to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). SAFe is a framework for implementing agile practices at enterprise level and it provides a roadmap for portfolios, programs and teams. Large organizations adopting to SAFe are facing challenges in coordinating, planning and managing requirements, as they work with globally distributed teams. The goal of this thesis was to improve the Requirements Engineering (RE) process using Scaled Agile Framework in globally distributed teams. The main research method used in this thesis was action research, an iterative approach which combines theory and practice. The empirical study was conducted in a large project that used SAFe and had eight globally distributed teams. In order to investigate the challenges faced by globally distributed teams, analysis of the existing literature and RE process flow in SAFe was important. It served as a good input to understand which good RE practices can be applied in the empirical study. The results of the study show that visually representing requirements as models and sharing domain and system knowledge through Community of Practice (CoP) reduced ambiguity in requirements. The good RE practice applied in SAFe, of working and improving collaboratively with the globally distributed teams helped in better coordination and managing of requirements. In addition to this, it was also essential to have SAFe training to develop clear and shared understanding of the framework and RE process. The lessons learned from the empirical study indicate that a well-organized PI planning is the key RE practice of SAFe in providing the big picture of requirements to all members in distributed teams. In addition, Community of Practice (CoP) can be a key RE practice of SAFe in sharing knowledge such as business domain, system knowledge, skills and techniques, and experiences

Managing Human Factors and Requirements in Agile Development of Automated Vehicles: An Exploration

Context: Automated Vehicle (AV) technology has evolved significantly incomplexity and impact; it is expected to ultimately change urban transporta-tion. However, research shows that vehicle automation can only live up to thisexpectation if it is defined with human capabilities and limitations in mind.Therefore, it is necessary to bring human factors knowledge to AV developers.Objective: This thesis aims to empirically study how we can effectivelybring the required human factors knowledge into large-scale agile AV develop-ment. The research goals are 1) to explore requirements engineering and humanfactors in agile AV development, 2) to investigate the problems of requirementsengineering, human factors, and agile way of working in AV development, and3) to demonstrate initial solutions to existing problems in agile AV development.Method: We conducted this research in close collaboration with industry,using different empirical methodologies to collect data—including interviews,workshops, and document analysis. To gain in-depth insights, we did a qualita-tive exploratory study to investigate the problem and used a design scienceapproach to develop initial solution in several iterations.Findings and Conclusions: We found that applying human factorsknowledge effectively is one of the key problem areas that need to be solved inagile development of artificial intelligence (AI)-intense systems. This motivatedus to do an in-depth interview study on how to manage human factors knowl-edge during AV development. From our data, we derived a working definitionof human factors for AV development, discovered the relevant properties ofagile and human factors, and defined implications for agile ways of working,managing human factors knowledge, and managing requirements. The designscience approach allowed us to identify challenges related to agile requirementsengineering in three case companies in iterations. Based on these three casestudies, we developed a solution strategy to resolve the RE challenges in agileAV development. Moreover, we derived building blocks and described guide-lines for the creation of a requirements strategy, which should describe howrequirements are structured, how work is organized, and how RE is integratedinto the agile work and feature flow.Future Outlook: In future work, I plan to define a concrete requirementstrategy for human factors knowledge in large-scale agile AV development.It could help establishing clear communication channels and practices forincorporating explicit human factors knowledge into AI-based large-scale agileAV development

Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED