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Identifying Relevant Factors of Requirements Quality: An Industrial Case Study

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Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14588))

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Abstract

[Context and Motivation]: The quality of requirements specifications impacts subsequent, dependent software engineering activities. Requirements quality defects like ambiguous statements can result in incomplete or wrong features and even lead to budget overrun or project failure. [Problem]: Attempts at measuring the impact of requirements quality have been held back by the vast amount of interacting factors. Requirements quality research lacks an understanding of which factors are relevant in practice. [Principal Ideas and Results]: We conduct a case study considering data from both interview transcripts and issue reports to identify relevant factors of requirements quality. The results include 17 factors and 11 interaction effects relevant to the case company. [Contribution]: The results contribute empirical evidence that (1) strengthens existing requirements engineering theories and (2) advances industry-relevant requirements quality research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Available at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10149474.

  2. 2.

    In the remainder of the paper, a requirements quality factor is referred to as a quality factor as the scope of this article remains focused on requirements specifications.

  3. 3.

    https://www.descript.com/.

  4. 4.

    Available at https://github.com/JulianFrattini/rqi-relf/blob/main/src/analytics/results.md.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the KKS foundation through the S.E.R.T. Research Profile project at Blekinge Institute of Technology. I thank Michael Unterkalmsteiner for independently performing the coding task. Furthermore, I owe great thanks to Parisa Yousefi, Charlotte Ljungman, and Fabiano Sato from Ericsson for their continuous support that made this work possible in the first place.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Valhallavägen 1, 371 41, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Julian Frattini

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  1. Julian Frattini
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Correspondence to Julian Frattini .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Daniel Mendez

  2. NOVA University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Moreira

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Frattini, J. (2024). Identifying Relevant Factors of Requirements Quality: An Industrial Case Study. In: Mendez, D., Moreira, A. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14588. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57327-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57327-9_2

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-57327-9

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