A Survey of Requirements Engineering Education

Ali Idri, Sofia Ouhbi Dept. of Software Engineering

University Mohammed V Souissi Rabat, Morocco

idri@ensias.ma, ouhbisofia@gmail.com

Jose Luis Fernández-Aléman, Ambrosio Toval Dept. Informatica y Sistemas

University of Murcia Murcia, Spain

aleman@um.es, atoval@um.es

Abstract—Requirements engineering (RE) is critical to the success of a software development project. In order to have professionals who are capable of accomplishing software projects successfully, Requirements engineering education (REE) is there- fore an important endeavor. The objective of this paper is to identify and to present the current research on REE in order to discuss their contribution types, identify deficits and to extract the useful approaches. A search was conducted using bibliographic databases to find as much research as possible. The papers found in this study are classified with respect to research types and their empirical type. We believe that this study will be a reliable basis for further research in Requirements engineering education.

Keywords: Requirement Engineering; Education; Survey.

I. INTRODUCTION

Research endeavors in software development have found that failures and deficiencies of software systems are often rooted in the requirements activities undertaken [1], this is mainly caused by the lack of appropriate skills and knowledge of those engaged in Requirements Engineering (RE) activities. Thus, there has been an increasing emphasis on incorporating RE into university curricula for undergraduate as well as postgraduate students in the past decade. A significant number of studies have been done in the area of Requirements Engineering Education (REE) [2]. RE has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. This increasing interest demands academia to provide software engineering students with a solid foundation in the subject matter. Many studies have been carried out to evaluate and to propose models, guidelines, frameworks and solutions for Requirements engineering education (REE). However, academics and practitioners are still searching for the effective methodology to adopt, in order to deliver high quality and relevant RE courses.

The objective of this paper is to identify and to classify the current studies on REE in order to identify deficits and provide recommendations in future research. The research method used was a survey. The papers of this research were found mainly by searching bibliographic databases (ACM, IEEE, Science Direct and Wiley). We classified the papers with respect to research type, empirical type and with respect to their contribution type.

This paper is structured as follows. Section II describes the research method that was used in this paper. Section III introduces the different articles in this study and presents the

classification results. Section IV discusses the main findings of the survey. Finally, Section V presents the conclusion.

II. METHOD

This study has been undertaken as a survey of the articles that address the topic of REE. We excluded from our research the papers that are not focused on education and the ones that are presenting a general focus on software.

A. Classification framework

We classified the studies with respect of their research type, empirical type and contribution type.

The type of contribution could be:

Process: Sequence of interdependent and linked procedures, which, at every stage, consume one or more resources to convert inputs into outputs.

Method: A series of steps taken to acquire knowledge.

Tool: Something used in the performance of an operation.

Model: A representation of a system that allows for investigation of the properties of the system.

Guideline: A statement by which to determine a course of action.

Metric: Measurements.

Framework: A real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.

We identified the studies that are empirical and we classified them according to their type: Case study, Survey, Experiment or Experience Study.

The research facet, which reflects the research approach used in the papers, is general and independent from a specific focus area. We choose an existing classification of research approaches in the paper [3].

Validation Research: Techniques investigated are novel and have not yet been implemented in practice. Techniques used are for example experiments, i.e., work done in the lab.

This research is part of the projects PEGASO-PANGEA (TIN2009-13718- C02-02), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) and MELISA- GREIS (PAC08-0142-335), financed by the Regional Science and Technology Ministry of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). The PhD thesis is financed by Mediterranean Office for Youth (MOY).

Evaluation Research: Techniques are implemented in practice and an evaluation of the technique is conducted. That means, it is shown how the technique is implemented in practice (solution implementation) and what are the consequences of the implementation in terms of benefits and drawbacks (implementation evaluation).

Solution Proposal: A solution for a problem is proposed, the solution can be either novel or a significant extension of an existing technique. The potential benefits and the applicability of the solution is shown by a small example or a good line of argumentation.

Philosophical Papers: These papers sketch a new way of looking at existing things by structuring the field in form of a taxonomy or conceptual framework.

Opinion Papers: These papers express the personal opinion of somebody whether a certain technique is good or bad, or how things should been done. They do not rely on related work and research methodologies.

Experience Papers: Experience papers explain on what and how something has been done in practice. It has to be the personal experience of the author.

B. Identification of studies

To identify the articles, we consulted the following sources: IEEEXplore, ACM Digital Library, Springer Link, and Science Direct. We also manually searched the conference proceedings and journals in which studies relevant to REE. Google scholar was also selected to seek grey literature in the field such as white papers and technical reports.

TABLE I. SOURCE RESULTS

Source Investigated studies Selected studies Automated search IEEE Digital Library 20 12 ACM Digital Library 3 1 ScienceDirect 0 0 Wiley 0 0 Total 23 13 Manuel Search Conference 14 8 Journal 7 5 Workshop 4 2 Google Scholar 18 3 Book 1 0 Total 44 18 Overall results from both searches 67 31

We selected 31 papers from 67 papers found. When the same paper appeared in more than one source, only once was taken into account.

C. Analysis and synthesis method

We analyzed the papers and extracted the main information. The data was tabulated in an Excel Sheet for both quantitative and quality assessment.

III. RESULTS

The following subsections present the analysis of the results and the map created by combining different facets.

A. RE phases

Some studies focus on a RE phases, e.g. requirements elicitation, requirements abstraction model or requirements inspection. In the paper [4] the authors outline an interactive simulation tool that permits the support of the training of engineers in the global requirements elicitation process. Other authors [5] survey and evaluate techniques for eliciting requirements of computer-based systems, paying particular attention to dealing with social issues. The paper [6] describes a study that is focused on whether the background and experience of an inspector (especially educational background) affects his performance during a requirements inspection. The main purpose of the evaluation in [7] is to assess the usefulness and usability of RAM in a controlled environment prior to widespread industry piloting. The paper [8] focuses on three case studies in which graduate students applied a novel security requirements engineering methodology to real-world software development projects.

B. Innovation in REE

Innovative and engaging activities are proposed by some papers to promote the attention and involvement of the requirements engineering students, particularly to acquire knowledge and develop critical practical skills. The panel [9] attempts to discuss the key challenges in details and provide an opportunity for a meaningful dialogue between academics and practitioners for identifying effective pedagogical paradigms. The paper [10] describes the problems faced in trying to establish an adequate and stable set of requirements and proposes a novel Viewpoint- Oriented Requirements Definition method (VORD) as a mean of tackling some of these problems. The paper [11] investigates the teaching system on software engineering in Kaunas University of Technology. The paper [12] proposes 10 small steps to better requirements. The paper [1] summarizes the results of a study of the requirements component of model curricula in the disciplines of computer science, information systems and software engineering. The paper [13] shows that the approach taken by most programs is to teach formal techniques for software development in a separate course on formal methods. The paper [14] aims to inspire a discussion for why knowing the unknown and unknowable of RE is a critical design skill. The paper [15] describes research into the selection and combination of RE techniques as well as a case study that applied the selection process to an industrial software project. In the paper [16], the authors performed a field study to examine in detail how project selection is performed and what procedural relation- ship, if any, exists between project selection and requirements analysis. The paper [17] describes an empirical study of the utility of multiple worlds reasoning (using abduction) for domain modeling. The paper [18] presents an overview of the field of software systems requirements engineering (RE). It describes the main areas of RE practice, and highlights some key open research issues for the future. The book [19] is a guide for professionals charged with the task of determining

the requirements for planned systems and software in computing and engineering. In the paper [20], the authors consider to what extent the modeling and simulation (M&S) community employs software requirements engineering (SRE) in the model development process.

C. Practical solution in REE

Some Papers focused on practical solutions for REE. The paper [21] describes the requirements engineering part of an experiential Enterprise Architecture (EA) course delivered at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The paper [22] describes a game called RE-O- Poly based upon the popular board game Monopoly that was developed to introduce and reinforce a fundamental set of established RE good practices. Other authors [23] have de- scribed their experience of teaching an undergraduate subject entirely dedicated to RE education and training. They used role playing as a pedagogical tool to provide their students a fuller appreciation of the range of technical as well as non-technical issues involved in the RE practices. The paper [24] describes two consecutive controlled experiments comparing different requirements prioritization techniques with the objective of understanding differences in time-consumption, ease of use and accuracy. In the book [25], the authors demonstrate how conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating products, processes, and system is the appropriate context for engineering education curriculum of a course in requirements engineering and management. The paper [16] presents the curriculum of a course in requirements engineering and management intended for software developers with a first-level academic degree in computing and experience in developing real software solutions. Other proposal [26] shows that by utilizing experiences close to students it is possible to put abstract theory and practices in a context, as well as accomplish a deeper learning. The paper [27] contributes to the current understandings of the RE process through highlighting the mismatch between "approved” RE process models and current RE practice.

D. Creativity in REE

Some papers propose frameworks for understanding creativity in requirements engineering. The paper [28] extends previous research into creativity in RE and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding creativity in requirements engineering. The paper [29] proposes the application to requirements elicitation of an innovative creativity technique based on a model of the pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM).

E. Problems in REE

Few papers identify the main problems in REE, via a survey. The aim of the paper [2] is to find out the problems that students face in a Requirements Engineering course offered in major public universities in Malaysia and compare them with those presented in the REE literature. The paper [30] is an exploratory survey and its quantitative results offer opportunities for further interpretation and comparison.

F. Classification result

The overall result is presented in Table II.

TABLE II. CLASSIFICATION TABLE

Paper Research Type Empirical type Contribution Type [1] Evaluation Research Survey Model [2] Evaluation Research Survey Metric [4] Solution Proposal No Method [5] Experience Paper Case & [6] Evaluation Research Experiment Model [7] Experience Paper Case & [8] Solution Proposal No Model [9] Evaluation Research Experience & [10] Experience Paper Experiment Metric [11] Evaluation Research No Guideline [12] Experience Paper Case & [13] Evaluation research No Guideline [14] Evaluation Research Experiment Framework [15] Evaluation Research Experiment Process [16] Evaluation Research Survey Guideline [17] Solution Proposal Experiment Model [18] Evaluation Research No Model [19] Solution Proposal Experiment Method [20] Solution Proposal Case & [21] Experience Paper Experiment Method [22] Solution Proposal No Framework [23] Experience Paper Experience & [24] Validation Research No Method [25] Evaluation Research Experiment Method [27] Solution Proposal Survey Framework [28] Solution Proposal No Process [29] Experience Paper Experiment Guideline [30] Evaluation Research Survey Metric [31] Evaluation Research Survey Model [32] Solution Proposal No Guideline [33] Evaluation Research Survey Model

We can see from Figure 1 that 42% of the selected publications are evaluation research and 36% are solution proposal research.

Figure 1. Research Type

In Figure 2 we can remark that 71% of the selected papers are empirical studies: 32% describe an experiment, 19% present surveys, 13% report case studies and the rest are experience studies.

Figure 2. Empirical Type

In Figure 3 we can remark that 26% of the studies propose methods as contribution, 19% present models, 16% propose guidelines, 13% provide metrics, 20% present equally frame- work and process, and just 6% introduce tools.

Figure 3. Contribution Type

To summarize the results, we used in Figure 4 a bubble plot to provide a classification map. The size of a bubble is proportional to the number of articles that are in the pair of categories corresponding to the bubble coordinates.

Figure 4. Classification results in form of Bubble plot

IV. DISCUSSION

This section summarizes the principle finding of this survey and discusses the implications for research and practice.

A. Principle findings

The goal of this survey was to examine the studies about REE. The main findings of our study are the following

Despite the increasing interest in REE, we found few studies that discuss and try to address the education of Requirements Engineering. The majority of the studies found were focused on the application of RE in industry. Therefore, the selected papers presented add many inputs to REE.

The majority of the papers reported experiments of their authors; propose methods and present models that can improve REE.

Few papers present validation research. More research are needed to investigate on novel technique.

The majority of the papers did not report the problems that need to be addressed in REE.

Requirements Engineering Education is an important topic and needs to be more explored.

B. Implications for research and practice

The findings of our survey study have implications for both researchers who are planning new studies in REE and for practitioners who are working in REE and would like to have an overview on the existent studies on REE.

We believe that our study will be a good start for new research. We advise practitioners to adopt some solution proposed in the selected papers of our study, in order to improve the quality of RE courses.

V. CONCLUSION

This paper provides an extensive overview of existing research in REE. We classified the selected papers according to their research type and contribution type. We described briefly the papers selected in our study. We identified a need for validation research, solution proposals that address REE.

An improved education in the field of requirements activities could lead to improved development processes and hence, to software systems that have more chance of doing what their users want them to do [1]. We hope that our findings will be useful in the improvement of the REE and that researchers will use this paper as a starting point to investigate on better ways to deliver requirements engineering courses in the future.

Ongoing research is based on performing a systematic mapping study with the aim of identifying and classifying more research in REE.

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