Maya Daneva

Requirements Prioritization Based on Benefit and Cost Prediction: An Agenda for Future Research

In early phases of the software cycle, requirements prioritization necessarily relies on the specified requirements and on predictions of benefit and cost of individual requirements. This paper presents results of a systematic review of literature, which investigates how existing methods approach the problem of requirements prioritization based on benefit and cost. From this review, it derives a set of under-researched issues which warrant future efforts and sketches an agenda for future research in this area.

ERP requirements engineering practice: lessons learned

Standard off-the-shelf requirements engineering processes have become a key to conceptualizing any integrated, corporate-wide solution based on packaged enterprise resource planning software. A generic RE model offers defined processes, suggests process stakeholders, specifies steps to accomplish tasks, indicates task dependencies, and provides standard tool support for ERP RE. Essentially, any off-the-shelf RE process is about composition and reconciliation: you start with a general set of business process and data requirements, then explore standard ERP functionality to see how closely it matches your organizations process and data needs.

A systematic mapping study on empirical evaluation of software requirements specifications techniques

This paper describes an empirical mapping study, which was designed to identify what aspects of Software Requirement Specifications (SRS) are empirically evaluated, in which context, and by using which research method. On the basis of 46 identified and categorized primary studies, we found that understandability is the most commonly evaluated aspect of SRS, experiments are the most commonly used research method, and the academic environment is where most empirical evaluation takes place.

Cloud computing security requirements: A systematic review

Many publications have dealt with various types of security requirements in cloud computing but not all types have been explored in sufficient depth. It is also hard to understand which types of requirements have been under-researched and which are most investigated. This papers goal is to provide a comprehensive and structured overview of cloud computing security requirements and solutions. We carried out a systematic review and identified security requirements from previous publications that we classified in nine sub-areas: Access Control, Attack/Harm Detection, Non-repudiation, Integrity, Security Auditing, Physical Protection, Privacy, Recovery, and Prosecution. We found that (i) the least researched sub-areas are non-repudiation, physical protection, recovery and prosecution, and that (ii) access control, integrity and auditability are the most researched sub-areas.

Do We Know Enough about Requirements Prioritization in Agile Projects: Insights from a Case Study

Requirements prioritization is an essential mechanism of agile software development approaches. It maximizes the value delivered to the clients and accommodates changing requirements. This paper presents results of an exploratory cross-case study on agile prioritization and business value delivery processes in eight software organizations. We found that some explicit and fundamental assumptions of agile requirement prioritization approaches, as described in the agile literature on best practices, do not hold in all agile project contexts in our study. These are (i) the driving role of the client in the value creation process, (ii) the prevailing position of business value as a main prioritization criterion, (iii) the role of the prioritization process for project goal achievement. This implies that these assumptions have to be reframed and that the approaches to requirements prioritization for value creation need to be extended.

Value Creation by Agile Projects: Methodology or Mystery?

Business value is a key concept in agile software development approaches. This paper presents results of a systematic review of literature on how business value is created by agile projects. We found that with very few exceptions, most published studies take the concept of business value for granted and do not state what it means in general as well as in the specific study context. We could find no study which clearly indicates how exactly individual agile practices or groups of those create value and keep accumulating it over time. The key implication for research is that we have an incentive to pursue the study of value creation in agile project by deploying empirical research methods.

An Ontology Based Approach to Non-functional Requirements Conceptualization

The growing awareness of the importance of Non- Functional Requirements (NFRs) among the requirements engineering (RE) community in the last few years led to a heightened interest in NFRs description and modeling and, in turn, to the emergence of several models intended to capture and structure the relevant concepts defining the NFRs and their relations. Yet, most of the terms and concepts in use for describing NFRs have been loosely defined, and often there is no commonly accepted taxonomy of NFRs. Common Foundation is required to enable effective communication and to enable integration of NFRs’ related research activities within the RE community. In this paper, this Common Foundation will be realized by developing an ontology-based approach which is adequate for projects taking into consideration the NFRs and their relations earlier in the software development and throughout the life cycle.

A conceptual model and process for client-driven agile requirements prioritization

Continuous customer-centric requirements reprioritization is essential in successfully performing agile software development. Yet, in the agile RE literature, very little is known about how agile reprioritization happens in practice. Generic conceptual models about this process are missing, which in turn, makes it difficult for both practitioners and researchers to reason about requirements decision-making at inter-iteration time. This paper presents a Grounded Theory study on agile requirements prioritization methods to yield a conceptual model for understanding the inter-iteration prioritization process in terms of inputs and outcomes. The latter is derived by using qualitative empirical data, published earlier by other authors. Such a conceptual model makes explicit the concepts that are used tacitly in different agile requirements prioritization methods and can be used for structuring future empirical investigations about this topic.

Lessons learnt from five years of experience in ERP requirements engineering

Generic off-the-shelf requirements engineering (RE) processes have been packaged by enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors since 1997, and adopted by client organizations as the key strategy for getting the business requirements and the conceptual design for their complex solutions. We summarize one companys five years of experience in making a generic ERP RE model a live process. It rests on previously published ERP RE process assessment results and reports on what we learnt with particular focus on typical issues organizations face when adopting a standard model and solutions that can be used to avoid those issues in the future. Each of our lessons is described together with a RE practice, technical foundation for the practice and engineering techniques for the RE practitioner. The lessons were used to refine our corporate documentation model, a process-focused and template-based ERP-architecture framework.

A conceptual model of client-driven agile requirements prioritization: results of a case study

Requirements (re)prioritization is an essential mechanism of agile development approaches to maximize the value for the clients and to accommodate changing requirements. Yet, in the agile Requirements Engineering (RE) literature, very little is known about how agile (re)prioritization happens in practice. Conceptual models about this process are missing, which, in turn, makes it difficult for both practitioners and researchers to reason about requirements decision-making at inter-iteration time. We did a multiple case study on agile requirements prioritization methods to yield a conceptual model for understanding the inter-iteration prioritization process. The model is derived by using interview data from practitioners in 8 development organizations. Such a model makes explicit the concepts that are used tacitly in the agile requirements prioritization practice and can be used for structuring future empirical investigations about this topic, and for analyzing, supporting, and improving the process in real-life projects.