Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications

Nelly Condori-Fernandez; Maia Daneva; Nicolaas Sikkel; Andrea Herrmann

doi:10.1109/EmpiRE.2011.6046251

Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications

Nelly Condori-Fernandez, Maia Daneva, Nicolaas Sikkel, Andrea Herrmann

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

86 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Recently, the Requirements Engineering (RE) community has become increasingly aware of the importance of carrying out industry-relevant research. Researchers and practitioners should be able to evaluate the relevance of their empirical research to increase the likely adoption of RE methods in software industry. It is in this perspective that we evaluate 24 experimental studies on comprehensibility of software requirements specifications to determine their practical value. To that end a checklist based on Kitchenham’s approach was operationalized from a practitioner’s perspective and an analysis with respect to the main factors that affecting on comprehensibility was carried out. Although 100% of the papers reviewed reported statistically significant results, and 96% of them take examples from a real-life project. 80% of the papers do not scale to real life, 54% of the papers do not specify the context in which the results are expected to be useful. We also found that there is a lack of underlying theory in the formulation of comprehensibility questions.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2011 First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering
Place of Publication	USA
Publisher	IEEE
Pages	21-28
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4577-1076-6
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4577-1075-9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/EmpiRE.2011.6046251
Publication status	Published - 30 Aug 2011
Event	First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering, EMPIRE 2011 - Trento, Italy Duration: 30 Aug 2011 → 30 Aug 2011 Conference number: 1 http://selab.fbk.eu/empire2011/

Publication series

Name
Publisher	IEEE Computer Society

Workshop

Workshop	First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering, EMPIRE 2011
Abbreviated title	EmpiRE 2011
Country/Territory	Italy
City	Trento
Period	30/08/11 → 30/08/11
Internet address	http://selab.fbk.eu/empire2011/

Keywords

METIS-278743
IR-77811
Comprehensibility
EWI-20390
Practioner’s checklist
Requirements specifications
SCS-Services
Experiments

Access to Document

10.1109/EmpiRE.2011.6046251

Empire-CondoriEtAl-v4.6Accepted author version, 284 KB

Cite this

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title = "Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications",

abstract = "Recently, the Requirements Engineering (RE) community has become increasingly aware of the importance of carrying out industry-relevant research. Researchers and practitioners should be able to evaluate the relevance of their empirical research to increase the likely adoption of RE methods in software industry. It is in this perspective that we evaluate 24 experimental studies on comprehensibility of software requirements specifications to determine their practical value. To that end a checklist based on Kitchenham{\textquoteright}s approach was operationalized from a practitioner{\textquoteright}s perspective and an analysis with respect to the main factors that affecting on comprehensibility was carried out. Although 100% of the papers reviewed reported statistically significant results, and 96% of them take examples from a real-life project. 80% of the papers do not scale to real life, 54% of the papers do not specify the context in which the results are expected to be useful. We also found that there is a lack of underlying theory in the formulation of comprehensibility questions.",

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author = "Nelly Condori-Fernandez and Maia Daneva and Nicolaas Sikkel and Andrea Herrmann",

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language = "English",

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Condori-Fernandez, N, Daneva, M, Sikkel, N & Herrmann, A 2011, Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications. in 2011 First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering. IEEE, USA, pp. 21-28, First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering, EMPIRE 2011, Trento, Italy, 30/08/11. https://doi.org/10.1109/EmpiRE.2011.6046251

Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications. / Condori-Fernandez, Nelly; Daneva, Maia; Sikkel, Nicolaas et al.

2011 First International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering. USA : IEEE, 2011. p. 21-28.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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AB - Recently, the Requirements Engineering (RE) community has become increasingly aware of the importance of carrying out industry-relevant research. Researchers and practitioners should be able to evaluate the relevance of their empirical research to increase the likely adoption of RE methods in software industry. It is in this perspective that we evaluate 24 experimental studies on comprehensibility of software requirements specifications to determine their practical value. To that end a checklist based on Kitchenham’s approach was operationalized from a practitioner’s perspective and an analysis with respect to the main factors that affecting on comprehensibility was carried out. Although 100% of the papers reviewed reported statistically significant results, and 96% of them take examples from a real-life project. 80% of the papers do not scale to real life, 54% of the papers do not specify the context in which the results are expected to be useful. We also found that there is a lack of underlying theory in the formulation of comprehensibility questions.

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KW - EWI-20390

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KW - Experiments

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ER -

Practical Relevance of Experiments in Comprehensibility of Requirements Specifications

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Keywords

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