Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Software Process Improvement Problems in Twelve Software Companies: An Empirical Analysis
Empirical Software Engineering
A field study of requirements engineering practices in information systems development
RE '95 Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering
Requirements engineering paper classification and evaluation criteria: a proposal and a discussion
Requirements Engineering
An exploratory study of why organizations do not adopt CMMI
Journal of Systems and Software
A practitioner's guide to light weight software process assessment and improvement planning
Journal of Systems and Software
The Rise and Fall of the Chaos Report Figures
IEEE Software
Replications types in experimental disciplines
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Evaluating requirements modeling methods based on user perceptions: A family of experiments
Information Sciences: an International Journal
Information and Software Technology
Requirements engineering as a key to holistic software quality
ISCIS'06 Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Computer and Information Sciences
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Context: For many years, we have observed industry struggling in defining a high quality requirements engineering (RE) and researchers trying to understand industrial expectations and problems. Although we are investigating the discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, those studies either concentrate on validating specific methods or on single companies or countries. Therefore, they allow only for limited empirical generalisations. Objective: To lay an empirical and generalisable foundation about the state of the practice in RE, we aim at a series of open and reproducible surveys that allow us to steer future research in a problem-driven manner. Method: We designed a globally distributed family of surveys in joint collaborations with different researchers from different countries. The instrument is based on an initial theory inferred from available studies. As a long-term goal, the survey will be regularly replicated to manifest a clear understanding on the status quo and practical needs in RE. In this paper, we present the design of the family of surveys and first results of its start in Germany. Results: Our first results contain responses from 30 German companies. The results are not yet generalisable, but already indicate several trends and problems. For instance, a commonly stated problem respondents see in their company standards are artefacts being underrepresented, and important problems they experience in their projects are incomplete and inconsistent requirements. Conclusion: The results suggest that the survey design and instrument are well-suited to be replicated and, thereby, to create a generalisable empirical basis of RE in practice.