Criteria for the Evaluation of Requirements Engineering Methods in a Change Intensive Environment

Unstable requirements are one of the main threats to project success. Dealing with change is therefore an important capability that requirements engineering (RE) methods should have. There are changes that can be prevented by an appropriate method. On the other hand there are always also changes that cannot be prevented. A RE method should provide suitable means to deal with them in a way that minimizes the threat to project success. It is therefore interesting to analyze, how suited existing RE methods are in the context of unstable requirements. In this paper we want to lay the foundation for such an analysis by identifying the critical issues that RE methods have to address in this context. We identify the causes for requirements changes and determine which of these causes can be counteracted. Furthermore we present difficulties arising from changing requirements that have to be overcome. We also discuss the general objectives in RE that a RE method has to achieve.     «

Unstable requirements are one of the main threats to project success. Dealing with change is therefore an important capability that requirements engineering (RE) methods should have. There are changes that can be prevented by an appropriate method. On the other hand there are always also changes that cannot be prevented. A RE method should provide suitable means to deal with them in a way that minimizes the threat to project success. It is therefore interesting to analyze, how suited existing RE...     »