Requirements process improvement through the phased introduction of good practice
Pete Sawyer, Ian Sommerville, Stephen Viller · Software Process Improvement and Practice · 1997
Current process improvement and maturity models pay little attention to requirements engineering. Typically, requirements engineering is considered to be a single activity in the overall development process. Even where this is not strictly the case, the requirements activities are not elaborated in sufficient detail to permit the derivation of an improvement plan. This is unfortunate because requirements engineering is increasingly recognized as a problem. Despite the regular improvement of techniques for eliciting, analysing, validating and managing requirements, even otherwise mature organizations repeatedly experience requirements problems. This paper describes a good practice-based approach to requirements engineering process improvement which aims to fill the gap left by existing process improvement methods. This distils practical information from over 60 requirements practices and provides a framework to help organizations identify their problem areas and deploy the practices most appropriate to their needs. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons Ltd