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Defining a Requirements Process Improvement Model

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Abstract

Both software organisations and the academic community are aware that the requirements phase of software development is in need of further support. We address this problem by creating a specialised Requirements Capability Maturity Model (R-CMM1). The model focuses on the requirements engineering process as defined within the established Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI’s) software process improvement framework. Our empirical work with software practitioners is a primary motivation for creating this requirements engineering process improvement model. Although all organisations in our study were involved in software process improvement (SPI), they all showed a lack of control over many requirement engineering activities.

This paper describes how the requirements engineering (RE) process is decomposed and prioritised in accordance with maturity goals set by the SEI’s Software Capability Maturity Model (SW CMM). Our R-CMM builds on the SEI’s framework by identifying and defining recommended RE sub-processes that meet maturity goals. This new focus will help practitioners to define their RE process with a view to setting realistic goals for improvement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, A10 9AB, UK

    Sarah Beecham, Tracy Hall & Austen Rainer

Authors
  1. Sarah Beecham
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  2. Tracy Hall
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Correspondence to Sarah Beecham.

Additional information

Sarah Beecham is a research fellow in the Department of Maths and Computing in The Open University in the UK. She is currently working on the EPSRC funded CRESTES project (http://mcs.open.ac.uk/crestes) looking into modelling resource estimation for long-lived software. She has recently completed her PhD for a program of work entitled “A Requirements-based Software Process Maturity Model”. Current research interests are in estimation for software evolution and maintenance and in the general areas of software process improvement. Her particular research interests are in empirical methods in software engineering and requirements engineering.

Tracy Hall leads the Systems & Software Research Group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. She specialises in the empirical investigation of technical and non-technical issues within software engineering. During the past ten years Tracy has successfully collaborated with many companies on a variety of research projects. She is very active in the Empirical Software Engineering community and is regularly invited to talk about empirical methods both in the UK and abroad. Tracy is an accomplished researcher having published over twenty high quality journal papers.

Austen Rainer Austen Rainer is a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. He studied for his PhD at Bournemouth University, in conjunction with IBM Hursley Park. His current research interests include open source software development, longitudinal case study research, and the credibility of empirical evidence for researchers and software practitioners.

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Beecham, S., Hall, T. & Rainer, A. Defining a Requirements Process Improvement Model. Software Qual J 13, 247–279 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-005-1752-9

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