OntoReD: requirements debt ontology
Viviane Duarte Bonfim, Fabiane Barreto Vavassori Benitti · Requirements Engineering · 2026
Abstract The practices proposed in agile methods to speed up software development, although they are beneficial to the organization, can affect the way in which requirements engineering activities are conducted as these practices are not explicit. These activities, when not carried out properly, can result in poorly understood, omitted and poorly specified requirements, leading to requirements debt and can compromise other stages of software development. However, requirements debts are little explored and, on many occasions, are unknown, not monitored or managed efficiently, which causes high maintenance costs over time. The objective of this article is to propose an Ontology focused on requirements debt in the agile context. The research was conducted through an investigation of the state of practice supported by \textit{grounded theory}, unifying the result with information obtained in two systematic studies of the literature: a systematic mapping of the literature that consists of identifying the causes, consequences and practices aimed at debts of requirements and a tertiary study focused on debt management, supporting the knowledge obtained about requirements debt and serving as input for the construction of an ontology, called “OntoReD”.