1 / 17

Gannon University Requirement Engineering

Gannon University Requirement Engineering A Case Study: “ Why Requirement Engineering Fails: A Survey Report from China ” by Liu et al. Presented by: Ibrahim Helal Alzahrani Mohamed Mahtab Ahmed Alfrraj Murtada B. Tunis Professor: Frank Xu

abram
Download Presentation

Gannon University Requirement Engineering

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Gannon University Requirement Engineering A Case Study: “Why Requirement Engineering Fails: A Survey Report from China” by Liu et al. Presented by: Ibrahim HelalAlzahrani Mohamed Mahtab Ahmed Alfrraj Murtada B. Tunis Professor: Frank Xu Date: 4/8/2013.

  2. Forecast: • As software work becomes more intensive, requirement engineering has gained attention in both academia and industry. • The question arises: under what situations RE is not working well? • Liu et al have tried to investigate some of these issues by studying the way RE is practiced across industries in China and the current paper is a result of one of such studies conducted in 2009.

  3. Outline: • Motivation and problem statement: 2 slides • Related work: 1 slide • Methods: 1 slide • Results: 6 slides • Summary: 1 slide • Future Work: 1 slide • Backup Slides: 1

  4. Motivation: • Requirement Engineering techniques have had no common standards across companies, countries, cultures, and continents • As companies get more globalized, the need to understand RE techniques used across boundaries and borders cannot be more apparent. • Successful requirement engineering is a function of successful ELICITATION, ORGANIZATION, and DOCUMENTATIONtechniques. • Understanding RE in China as an emerging economy could be the key to understanding RE as practiced in other emerging economies like the rest of the BRIC.

  5. Problem Statement: • “Understanding how the general software practitioners elicit and represent requirements in organizations in China to design better methods, target suitable training, and avoid recurring problems.”

  6. Related Work: • Ali Babar et al:“Establishing and Maintaining Trust in Software outsourcing Relationships: an empirical Investigation,” Journal of Systems and Software, 2007. • Zowghi Et al: “The impact of stakeholders. Geographical distribution on managing requirements in a multi-site organization,” 10th IEEE Int’l RE Conf., 2002. • Current Research: • Different in that it takes into account a large number of practitioners’ general experiences and observations across various projects. • And whilst most of the above focus on specific problems than understanding the general status quo of the industry, this paper try to focus on state-of-practice of RE in Chinese companies. • Earlier Studies: • El Emam et al: “A field study of Requirements Engineering Practices in Information Systems Development,” K. El Emam and N.H. Madhavji. 2nd IEEE Int’l Symp. RE, 1995. • Studied RE practices in information Systems development • 60 cases analysed • Discovered 7 technical/non-technical issues that influence RE processes in information systems • Sadraei et al: “A field study of RE practice in Australian Software Industry,” RE Journal, July, 2007. • Surveyed RE practice from 28 software projects • Used 16 Australian companies • Aranda et al: “Requirements in the Wild: How Small Companies Do It,” Aranda J., Easterbrook S., Wilson G., 17th IEEE Int’l RE Conf., 2007. • Investigated how small companies conduct RE activity.

  7. Methods: • Current article: Results of 2009 survey • 377 survey subjects • 237 software companies/research organizations • Business sectors: banking, healthcare, power generation, telecom, retail, and electronics. • Surveyed only software practitioners • Over 400 contacted; 377 responded • Over 200 also provided observations and success/failure stories and observations. • Age demographics: 25-35 • Over 30% have 5-10 years of work experience. • Subject roles: senior managers, general managers, architects, etc. • Mostly web survey-based • Used face-to-face interivews • Used stories and testimonials • Ran survey in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Surveyed: • State-owned enterprises • Multi-national corporations • Domestic private companies • Universities • Collected data on respondents status and organization • 2007-2008 survey: • Published in a separate paper: “understanding the Chinese Characteristics of Requirement Engineering, , Liu et al., 2009.”

  8. Results: A: Elicitation Techniques • Question 1: “In your organization, which kinds of work are performed during requirements engineering?” • Q2: “How much efforts are spent on RE-related activities in terms of percentage of project time?” • 42% of organizations spend more than 10% on RE for entire project duration • 25% of organization spend >20% • 21% of organizations spend <10% • 12% of organizations spend very little time • Q3: “Would your customers like to spend time on requirements-related activities?” • 120/377 participants: “customers are happy to be involved in RE-related activities • 185 participants: “No…although they value the importance of requirements and believed that sufficient time should be spent on delivering a high quality document.” • 72 participants: Neutral • Q4: “Do you think there are direct relationships between requirements specification and software quality?” • 68%: “believe that the quality of requirement documents has strong impact on the quality of final software system.” • 3%: “believe no relationship between spec and software quality • 29%: “believe only a moderate impact of spec on software quality.

  9. Results: A: Elicitation Techniques • Q5: “Which requirement elicitation method do you use?” • Q7: “What is the knowledge and skills background of people performing RE tasks?” • 45%: Taken RE classes in university • 29%: Short RE courses • 17%: Self-learning • 9%: No training at all • Q8: “Who do you communicate with during the phase of requirements elicitation?” • 57%: Leaders of related business department • 53%: Leaders of IT department • 19%: Leaders in customer organization • 14%: IT staff • 16%: Marketing staff • 5%: Others • Q9: “The customer keep changing requirements even after the development contract has been signed. How do you deal with this situation?” • 90%: “Changes are normal.” • 80%: will renegotiate the terms of contract • 7%: Will do whatever the customer says • 14%: Simply follow the contract • Q6: “What are some of the roles of the people who performed the requirement elicitation activities.” • 54%: Project Managers • 47%: General Manager • 25%: Marketing staff • 12%: System designer • 5%: Other

  10. Results: B: Representation Techniques • Q11: “What are the RE tools that are used in your daily practices?” • 40%: Use tools such as DOORS • 60%: Do not use any RE tools. • Q12: “What are the actual contents included in the requirement specifications?” • 78%: Project and goal description • 99%: Functional requirements description • 74%: Overall scheme • 64%: Non-functional requirements description • 50%: Change log. • “Risk analysis, changes and schedule receive less attention.” • Q10: “Which representation technique do you use?”

  11. Results: C: RE Failure and Success Stories and Findings. • 3. RE status for Domestic Private Companies(DPCs): • Interviewees from 32 DPCs • Sectors: telecom and software • Too much time spent on understanding requirements • Often nervous in meeting government officials • Trusted less by customers because they lack formal management and QA procedures. • 203/373 stories. • 15%: MNCs • 17%: Government sponsored enterprises • 53%: Domestic private companies • 8%: Universities • 7%: Anonymous • 1. RE status in MNCs: • Interviewees from 33 MNCs • HQ: US, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and India. • RE advanced and cutting-edge technology is being used. • PM tools used for RE particularly DOORS and Team Center. • 2. Government Owned Enterprise(GOEs): • Interviewees from 31 GOEs • Sectors: Energy, pharmaceutical, IT, home electronics. • RE status depends on how developed the geography is and also the sector concerned.

  12. Results: D: RE Status on Different Product Types • RE status for out-sourcing products: • Most are vague • Communication gaps exists • RE processes for international projects greatly affected by language, geography, cultural differences, and barriers. • 10%: Out-sourcing products • 16%: Mass marketed products • 74%: Customized products • RE status in mass marketed products: • Very difficult • Questionnaire often used in elicitation • Email strategy for elicitation was dismal • Face-to-face relatively successful • Higher quality data when customers more familiar with software functionality

  13. Summary: • Reuse existing design in wrong context and environment • RE decision makers lack of technical and domain expertise • Broken communication between customer, analyst, and developer • Lack of standardized domain data definition and system-environment interface. • Customers do not have a clear understanding of system requirements themselves, including scope of the system, major functional features and nonfunctional attributes • Users’ needs and understanding constantly change • Software engineers do not have access to sufficient domain knowledge and expertise • Project schedule too tight to allow sufficient interaction and learning period between customer and development team.

  14. Future Work: • Future work could look at organizing and documenting techniques to determine causes of failure. • Future work could use the same techniques studied for customized products which are not elaborated on in the report. • Future work could adopt workshop methods to gain the benefit of workshop advantages.

  15. Conclusions: • The research successfully provided an understanding of RE practicein Chinese industries • Elicitation and representation of RE methods clearly needs to several failures in RE

  16. Thank You For Listening

  17. Recommendations: • 1. Improve project management processes to facilitate communication, documentation, elicitation, and change control and management. • 2. Domain knowledge and prototype are necessary conditions for successful RE practice • 3. Making the customer feel their ownership and responsibility to the requirements and the future system • 4. Be proactive in RE process and predict potential changes and future requirements. • 5. Link RE with testing and adopt a test-driven design process

More Related