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On Understanding the Relation of Knowledge and Confidence to Requirements Quality

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Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12685))

Abstract

[Context and Motivation] Software requirements are affected by the knowledge and confidence of software engineers. Analyzing the interrelated impact of these factors is difficult because of the challenges of assessing knowledge and confidence. [Question/Problem] This research aims to draw attention to the need for considering the interrelated effects of confidence and knowledge on requirements quality, which has not been addressed by previous publications. [Principal ideas/results] For this purpose, the following steps have been taken: 1) requirements quality was defined based on the instructions provided by the ISO29148:2011 standard, 2) we selected the symptoms of low qualified requirements based on ISO29148:2011, 3) we analyzed five Software Requirements Specification (SRS) documents to find these symptoms, 3) people who have prepared the documents were categorized in four classes to specify the more/less knowledge and confidence they have regarding the symptoms, and 4) finally, the relation of lack of enough knowledge and confidence to symptoms of low quality was investigated. The results revealed that the simultaneous deficiency of confidence and knowledge has more negative effects in comparison with a deficiency of knowledge or confidence. [Contribution] In brief, this study has achieved these results: 1) the realization that a combined lack of knowledge and confidence has a larger effect on requirements quality than only one of the two factors, 2) the relation between low qualified requirements and requirements engineers’ needs for knowledge and confidence, and 3) variety of requirements engineers’ needs for knowledge based on their abilities to make discriminative and consistent decisions.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge that this work was supported by the KKS foundation through the S.E.R.T. Research Profile project at Blekinge Institute of Technology and the SERL Lab.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Razieh Dehghani & Raman Ramsin

  2. Department of Software Engineering, SERL Sweden/Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Krzysztof Wnuk, Daniel Mendez & Tony Gorschek

  3. Fortiss GmbH, Munich, Germany

    Daniel Mendez

Authors
  1. Razieh Dehghani
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  2. Krzysztof Wnuk
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  3. Daniel Mendez
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  4. Tony Gorschek
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  5. Raman Ramsin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raman Ramsin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Fabiano Dalpiaz

  2. Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA

    Paola Spoletini

Appendix

Appendix

Some examples of the questions that we have designed are provided herein. The questions in the following three sections are respectively aimed at assessing confidence, analyzing domain knowledge, and investigating knowledge in RE.

Section A: Imagine that a company manager has studied the SRS document that you have prepared for this project, and you are invited to join a team to help develop the system for which you have elicited the requirements. For the first step, the manager provides the following claims about your document and asks you to address them. Please indicate if you agree/disagree?

  1. 1)

    Regarding the following requirement, much more detail is required and still, it should be refined. DL1: “The information shall be presented using HTML5.2 and CSS3 languages.” Agree □ Disagree □

  2. 2)

    More detail about time-dependent conditions and constraints are required for these requirements: PR5: “The web application shall offer the functionality of registration in the web-app.”, and PR4: “The web application shall offer the functionality of login in the web-app.” Agree □ Disagree □

  3. 3)

    You are not sure about the appropriate time for verifying the requirements. Agree □ Disagree □

  4. 4)

    Policy and regulations have been provided. The effects of cultural elements should also be discussed. Agree □ Disagree □

  5. 5)

    You are not sure about the dependency between some requirements. For example, it seems that some issues regarding the dependency between the following requirements are not explained: PR1: “The web application shall offer the functionality of adding a new movie review.”, and PR2: “The web application shall offer the functionality of rating a movie.” Agree □ Disagree □

Section B: Please answer the following questions:

  • How many industrial (non- academic) projects have you been engaged in to develop a software system, the same as the system you have engineered requirements for (in the role of a project manager, programmer, etc.)?

  • How many academic projects have you been engaged in to develop a software system, the same as the system you have engineered requirements for (in the role of a project manager, programmer, etc.)?

Please categorize the following issues as important, partially-important, and non-important in selecting the most suitable requirements prioritization techniques.

  • Type of requirement (functional/non-functional)

  • Support for evaluating requirements

  • Caring about requirements dependencies

  • Support for coordinating various stakeholders’ requirements

  • The number of requirements that should be prioritized

Section C: Please answer the following questions:

  • How many industrial (non- academic) projects have you been engaged in for eliciting requirements?

  • How many academic projects have you been engaged in for eliciting requirements?

Please categorize the following issues as important, partially-important, and non-important for selecting the most suitable requirements elicitation techniques.

  • Complementary requirements elicitation techniques that are required to be applied.

  • Number of requirements that would be elicited by the technique(s) chosen.

  • People-dependent factors (such as culture).

  • The time that it would take to elicit the requirements.

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Dehghani, R., Wnuk, K., Mendez, D., Gorschek, T., Ramsin, R. (2021). On Understanding the Relation of Knowledge and Confidence to Requirements Quality. In: Dalpiaz, F., Spoletini, P. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12685. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73128-1_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73128-1_15

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-73127-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-73128-1

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