Requirements process improvement through the phased introduction of good practice

Current process improvement and maturity models pay little attention to requirements engineering. Typically, requirements engineering is considered to be a single activity in the overall development process. Even where this is not strictly the case, the requirements activities are not elaborated in sufficient detail to permit the derivation of an improvement plan. This is unfortunate because requirements engineering is increasingly recognised as a problem. Despite the regular improvement of techniques for eliciting, analysing, validating and managing requirements, even otherwise mature organisations repeatedly experience requirements problems. This paper describes a good practice-based approach to requirements engineering process improvement which aims to fill the gap left by existing process improvement methods. This distils practical information from over 60 requirements practices and provides a framework to help organisations identify their problem areas and deploy the practices most appropriate to their needs.