Requirements engineering process assessment and improvement approach for Malaysian software industry

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Requirements Engineering (RE) has an important implication on the overall success of software or system development projects. As more and more organisations consider RE as the principal problem area in projects, improving the RE process therefore becomes critical for future business success. Moreover, nowadays there are evidences highlighting that improvements in RE process maturity can contribute to improved business performance. There exist generic Software Process Improvement (SPI) standards and assessment methods, specialised RE process improvement models as well as guidance and advices on RE. However, they suffer from various issues that limit their adoption by organisations that are interested to assess and improve their RE process capabilities. This thesis proposes a new RE process assessment and improvement approach, which has two main components: a maturity model for RE process and an assessment method. To ease compliance to the Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV), the approach was developed based on the de-facto SPI framework. Based on previous researches, the RE maturity model is the first completely and consistently developed model that is provided with detailed, explicit guidance on RE best-practices and targeted for Malaysian software industry. The RE practices were mainly identified through a survey on the state of RE problems and the practices among local practitioners, and a review of RE textbooks, maturity frameworks and assessment methods. The proposed approach was evaluated and refined twice before it was validated by two sets of local RE and CMMI expert panels. The two-plus-one round of development and validation phases was designed based on a typical threeround Delphi method. To allow higher adoption rate among local practitioners, the approach supports organisations of all sizes to establish RE process improvement initiatives, particularly the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who comprises up to 99% of the total enterprises in the country.