Requirement engineering best practices for Malaysian public sector

Abstract

Although a variety of ICT standards have been developed as a guide for IT Managers, the Malaysian Public Sector is in tandem by developing new policies for them. The need of Requirement Engineering Best Practices for IT Manager is to produce an appropriate Software Requirement Specification. The proposed Requirement Engineering Best Practices aims to be a standard for the Malaysian Public Sector. The need of the standard is to resolve identified complexity during software project development. The complexity of present Requirement Engineering models and standard is either too specific or too general. These models do not meet the Public Sector’s requirement and the IT Manager depends on other proposed solution or does not use any Requirement Engineering models and standard. The complexity of present software process drives the Malaysian Public Sector to create several committees for monitoring the implementation of software project. It also includes several rules and policy. The rules and policy were prepared by different or multiple agencies and is complex to understand. The proposed software projects have to go through several levels of software project approval. This process is repeated and really took times to be approved. These complexities can be overcome with a proposal of Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline. The development of Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline is implemented based on the Requirement Engineering Best Practices Guideline Research Framework. This framework used with mixed method. Qualitative techniques were used for interview, refinement and validation. Meanwhile, quantitative techniques were used for the survey. Target respondents for this research are IT Managers in the Malaysian Public Sector. The guideline also consists of identified requirement processes: Software Project Approval Process, Software Requirement Specification Approval Process, Software Requirement Specification Activity Diagram and Software Requirement Specification Development Procedure. The proposed best practices is developed using the mutation and the mapping process between defined Requirement Engineering Process, Software Project Success Factor and Requirement Engineering Critical Issues which were explained in Requirement Engineering Best Practices Framework. This guideline also aligns with the ICT standard. The Requirement Engineering Best Practices had been tested with a pilot test by selected IT Managers and the actual survey had been randomly distributed to IT Manager in Malaysian Public Sector. Furthermore, the guideline had been refined by ICT experts using Delphi techniques. The proposed guideline fulfilled the criteria: completeness, sufficiency, reliability and acceptance. This compliance was validated by selected ICT experts who have different backgrounds and experiences. The proposed guideline will guide IT Managers in implementing the requirement gathering process and will also improve the Software Requirement Specification Process.