ArticlePDF Available

Requirements engineering education: A systematic mapping study

June 2013
Requirements Engineering 20(2)

June 2013
20(2)

DOI:10.1007/s00766-013-0192-5

Authors:

Ali Idri

Mohammed V University in Rabat/Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

José Luis Fernández-Alemán

University of Murcia

Ambrosio Toval

University of Murcia

Requirements engineering (RE) has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. Requirements engineering education (REE) is therefore an important undertaking if the field is to have professionals who are capable of successfully accomplishing software projects. This increasing interest demands that academia should provide software engineering students with a solid foundation in the subject matter. This paper aims to identify and to present the current research on REE that is available at present, and to select useful approaches and needs for future research. A systematic mapping study was therefore performed to classify the selected studies into five classification criteria: research type, empirical type, contribution type, RE activity, and curricula. A total of 79 papers were selected and classified according to these criteria. The results of this systematic mapping study are discussed, and a list of advice obtained from the REE literature for instructors is provided.

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Requirements engineering education: a systematic mapping study

Soﬁa Ouhbi •Ali Idri •Jose

´Luis Ferna

´ndez-Alema

´n•

Ambrosio Toval

Received: 1 February 2013 / Accepted: 7 November 2013 / Published online: 21 November 2013

!Springer-Verlag London 2013

Abstract Requirements engineering (RE) has attracted a

great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in

recent years. Requirements engineering education (REE) is

therefore an important undertaking if the ﬁeld is to have

professionals who are capable of successfully accom-

plishing software projects. This increasing interest

demands that academia should provide software engineer-

ing students with a solid foundation in the subject matter.

This paper aims to identify and to present the current

research on REE that is available at present, and to select

useful approaches and needs for future research. A sys-

tematic mapping study was therefore performed to classify

the selected studies into ﬁve classiﬁcation criteria: research

type, empirical type, contribution type, RE activity, and

curricula. A total of 79 papers were selected and classiﬁed

according to these criteria. The results of this systematic

mapping study are discussed, and a list of advice obtained

from the REE literature for instructors is provided.

Keywords Software requirements !Requirements

engineering !Education !Systematic mapping study

1 Introduction

Education research is becoming increasingly important not

only for educators but also for practitioners and researchers

in the domain. Top software engineering journals publish

papers on software engineering education. Important

Software and Requirements engineering (RE) Conferences,

such as the International Conference on Software Engi-

neering and the International Conference on RE, include

tracks or workshops on Software or requirements engi-

neering education (REE), respectively.

RE is concerned with the real-world goals for functions

(functional RE) and constraints (nonfunctional RE, e.g.,

constraints on quality and costs) on software systems. It is

also concerned with the relationships that these factors

have with precise speciﬁcations of software behavior and

with their evolution over time and across software families

[1]. RE is a multidisciplinary activity that deploys a variety

of techniques and tools at different stages of development

and for different kinds of application domains [2].

Research endeavors in software development have found

that the failures and deﬁciencies of software systems are

often rooted in the requirements activities undertaken [3–

6]. One of the main causes of this is the lack of appropriate

skills and knowledge of those engaged in RE activities [7].

The correct teaching of RE at university level has therefore

become an important mission for the profession. This

education should ideally be provided as an integrated part

of developing the requisite of RE and software engineering

technical skills, shortly before students become engineers

and enter the workforce [8]. There has thus been an

increasing emphasis on incorporating RE into the univer-

sity curricula of both undergraduate and postgraduate stu-

dents in the past decade [9–13], and a signiﬁcant number of

studies have been carried out in the area of REE [14–17].

S. Ouhbi (&)!A. Idri

Software Project Management research team, ENSIAS,

University Mohammed V Souissi, Rabat, Morocco

e-mail: ouhbisoﬁa@gmail.com

A. Idri

e-mail: idri@ensias.ma

J. L. Ferna

´ndez-Alema

´n!A. Toval

Department Informatica y Sistemas, University of Murcia,

Murcia, Spain

e-mail: aleman@um.es

A. Toval

e-mail: atoval@um.es

123

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

DOI 10.1007/s00766-013-0192-5

In order to present academics and practitioners with

effective methodologies that can be adopted to provide

high quality and relevant RE courses, a preliminary survey

of REE was carried out beforehand [18]. The survey in

question identiﬁed the contribution types of 31 articles,

while the paper presented here provides a new and com-

plete systematic mapping study. In addition to the formal

protocol established by systematic mapping studies, the

scope has been broadened, now including 79 papers in

addition to new classiﬁcation criteria, i.e., RE activities and

RE curricula are now considered. To the best of our

knowledge, no systematic mapping study has been pub-

lished in the ﬁeld of REE to date. A systematic mapping

study [19] is a deﬁned method with which a classiﬁcation

scheme can be built and a ﬁeld of interest structured. It

provides a structure of the type of research reports and

results that have been published by categorizing them. In

this paper, a systematic mapping study has been preformed,

which has allowed us to summarize the approaches pro-

posed for the development of the RE skills and to address

REE deﬁciencies. This mapping study has additionally

enabled us to discover which RE activities are most fre-

quently addressed in the REE literature and whether the

authors of the selected papers have based their solutions on

model curricula. The primary studies were identiﬁed by

using search strings in digital libraries.

The structure of this paper is as follows: Sect. 2lists

main RE curricula. Section 3presents the research method

of our study. Section 4reports the results obtained from the

systematic mapping study. Section 5discusses the main

ﬁndings of this mapping study, presents a list of hints for

RE instructors, and outlines threats to validity. Finally, our

conclusions and future work are shown in Sect. 6.

2 RE in model curricula, bodies of knowledge,

and standards

This section presents an analysis of the current situation in

REE, as regards the most important software engineering

model curricula, bodies of knowledge (BoKs), and stan-

dards. Various organizations have made great efforts to

identify RE knowledge [15]. Many curricula, BoKs, and

standards, including RE content, have been provided to

assist REE scholars to successfully undertake RE activities.

A BoK represents the complete set of concepts, terms, and

activities that a professional domain institutes, while a

model curriculum is a set of guidelines with which to

address education issues [15]. A standard is a technical

speciﬁcation that has been approved by a recognized

standardization organization with the objective of achiev-

ing the optimum degree of order in a given context [20].

Some examples of the three categories are presented in the

following subsections in order to provide an overview of

the results presented in Sect. 4.8, although this is not an

exhaustive description:

2.1 Model curricula

•The Joint IEEE/ACM Computing Curriculum—Soft-

ware Engineering (CCSE) [10]. This is a basic under-

graduate curriculum in software engineering that

contains a bibliography of information that every soft-

ware engineer should know. One of the programs in this

curriculum aims to help students understanding the

process of determining client needs and translating

them to software requirements.

•The Joint IEEE/ACM Computing Curriculum—Com-

puter Science (CCCS) [11]. This curriculum contains

undergraduate programs in each of the major comput-

ing disciplines. It highlights their commonalities and

differences and describes the characteristics of gradu-

ates from each kind of undergraduate degree program.

Some of the units in this curriculum address software

requirements, speciﬁcations, and analysis.

•ACM/AIS Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate

Degree Programs in Information Systems (IS) [21].

One of the learning objectives of this curriculum is to

teach undergraduate students how to ‘‘apply informa-

tion requirements speciﬁcation processes in the broader

systems analysis & design context’’ and how to ‘‘write

clear and concise business requirements documents and

convert them into technical speciﬁcations.’’

•Graduate Software Engineering (GSwE2009)—Curric-

ulum Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in

Software Engineering [22]. This curriculum is the ﬁrst

product of Integrated Software & Systems Engineering

Curriculum (iSSEc) Project. It primarily addresses the

education of students for a professional masters degree

in software engineering. Among its guidelines is a

Knowledge Area (KA) that focuses on the comprehen-

sion of software requirements fundamentals, require-

ments elicitation, requirements analysis, requirements

speciﬁcation, and requirements validation.

2.2 Body of knowledge

•The Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge

(SWEBOK) 12. is a comprehensive description of the

knowledge needed to practice software engineering. It

contains ten KAs such as requirements, design, testing,

construction, and conﬁguration management. It breaks

down each KA into topic areas. SWEBOK refers to RE

120 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

as Software Requirements (SR), and it breaks the RE

KA into SR fundamentals, process, elicitation, analysis,

speciﬁcation, validation, and practical considerations.

•Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK) [9]

draws on the knowledge areas of the SWEBOK. It

deﬁnes SE education BoKs that are appropriate to guide

the development of undergraduate SE curricula. It

contains recommended course sequences, guidelines

for curriculum development, and recommendations for

alternative teaching environments. The KAs of SEEK are

as follows: foundations, requirements, design, construc-

tion, maintenance, process, quality, and management.

•The Requirements Engineering Body of Knowledge

(REBOK). Aoyama et al. [14] has developed the model

and architecture of the body of knowledge of REBOK

and its proof of concept.

2.3 Standards

•IEEE Std 1233-98 [23] for system requirements spec-

iﬁcation. This standard was replaced by ISO/IEC/IEEE

29148:2011, which provides additional guidance in the

application of RE and requirements management

processes.

•IEEE Std 1465-98 [24] is a guideline for quality

requirements in software packages.

•IEEE Std 830-98 [25] is a guideline for the production

and content of the software requirements speciﬁcation.

•ISO/IEC 25030:2007 [26] is a guideline for software

product quality requirements and evaluation. It applies

the quality model deﬁned in ISO/IEC 9126-1 [27], and

it complies with the requirement processes deﬁned in

ISO/IEC 15288 [28], which is a system engineering

standard.

•ISO/IEC TR 24766:2009 [29] is a guideline or RE tool

capabilities.

3 Research methodology

According to Petersen et al. [19], the main goal of a sys-

tematic mapping study is to provide an overview of a

research area and identify the quantity and type of research

and results available within it. A researcher often wishes to

map the frequencies of publication over time to see trends.

A secondary goal may be to identify the fora in which

research in the area has been published.

Figure 1shows the mapping process, which covers the

search for relevant publications, the deﬁnition of a classi-

ﬁcation scheme, and the mapping of publications. A

mapping study differs from a systematic literature review

[30], which aims to establish the state of evidence, focus on

identifying best practices, and shows where particular

evidence is missing or is insufﬁciently reported in existing

studies. This is not the goal of a systematic mapping study,

since the articles are not studied in sufﬁcient detail. Its

main focus is rather on classiﬁcation, conducting a the-

matic analysis and identifying publication fora [19].

3.1 Research questions

The overall objective of our study is to gain insight into the

solutions designed to address the problems in REE, such as the

problems identiﬁed by Memon et al. [31]. In order to obtain a

detailed view on this topic, the systematic mapping study

addresses seven research questions (RQ). Table 1presents the

seven RQs with their corresponding motivations. These

questions will allow us to categorize the current research in

REE and to identify future areas of research in the ﬁeld.

3.2 Search strategy

The articles were identiﬁed by consulting the following

sources: IEEE Digital Library, ACM Digital Library, and

Science Direct. Google Scholar was also used to seek gray

literature in the ﬁeld such as white papers and technical

reports. The efﬁcient use of Google Scholar to perform

bibliometric studies has been demonstrated [32]. The fol-

lowing search string was used in order to perform the

automatic search in the digital libraries selected:

‘‘Requirements’’ AND (‘‘Engineering’’ OR ‘‘Elicita-

tion’’ OR ‘‘Speciﬁcation’’ OR ‘‘Analysis’’ OR ‘‘Valida-

tion’’ OR ‘‘Process’’) AND (‘‘Educat*’’ OR ‘‘Train*’’ OR

‘‘Teach*’’ OR ‘‘Course’’ OR ‘‘Learn*’’ OR ‘‘Curricul*’’

OR ‘‘Guide’’ OR ‘‘Coach*’’ OR ‘‘Explain*’’).

Fig. 1 Systematic mapping

process [19]

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 121

123

3.3 Study selection

The aim of the selection process was to identify the articles

that are the most relevant to the objective of this mapping

study. When the same paper appeared in more than one

source, it was considered only once according to our search

order. Each paper was retrieved by one author and evaluated

by two authors, in order to decide whether if it should be

included, by considering its title, abstract, and keywords.

Articles that were judged differently were discussed by the

two authors who carried out the evaluation of articles until

an agreement was found. The remaining authors reviewed

the ﬁnal selection. The Cohen’s Kappa coefﬁcient was used

to calculate the interrater agreement between the two

authors in their evaluation. The Kappa coefﬁcient was 0.95

which, according to Landis and Koch [33], indicates an

almost perfect agreement between the two assessments.

The ﬁrst step after the articles had been identiﬁed was to

eliminate duplicate titles, and titles clearly not related to

the review. The inclusion criteria were limited to the search

string, and the studies that met at least one of the following

exclusion criteria (EC) were excluded:

EC1 Papers that are not focused on education.

EC2 Papers presenting a general focus on software

education.

EC3 Papers about requirements for engineering

education.

Figure 2shows the search process result. 79 studies

were selected of 1,359 identiﬁed studies.

3.4 Quality assessment

The quality assessment (QA) is usually carried out in

systematic literature reviews and less in systematic map-

ping studies. However, in order to enhance our study, a

questionnaire was designed to assess the quality of the

papers selected. The QA was carried out by the two authors

who retrieved the studies. The way in which this ques-

tionnaire was written was inspired by a previous mapping

study [34].

(a) The study provides a contribution toward how REE

can be conducted. The possible answers were ‘‘Yes

(?1)’’ and ‘‘No (?0).’’

(b) The study presents clear solutions to the problems in

REE. The possible answers were ‘‘Yes (?1),’’

‘‘Partially (?0.5),’’ and ‘‘No (?0).’’

answers were: ‘‘Yes (?1)’’ and ‘‘No (?0).’’

(d) The study has been published in a recognized and

stable publication source. This question was rated by

considering the computer science conference rankings

(CORE) [35] (A, B, and C), and the Journal Citation

Reports (JCR) lists. The possible answers to this

question were

•for conferences, workshops, and symposia:

•(?1.5) if it is ranked CORE A,

•(?1) if it is ranked CORE B,

•(?0.5) if it is ranked CORE C,

•(?0) If it is not in CORE ranking.

Table 1 Research questions

No. Research question Main motivation

RQ1 Which publication channels

are the main targets for

REE research?

To identify where REE

research can be found as

well as the good targets for

publication of future studies

RQ2 How has the frequency of

approaches related to REE

changed over time?

To identify the publication

trends over time of REE

research

RQ3 What are the research types

of REE studies?

To explore the different types

of research reported in the

literature concerning REE

RQ4 Are REE studies empirically

validated?

To discover whether research

on REE has been validated

through empirical studies

RQ5 What are the approaches that

were reported in REE

research that address REE

problems?

To discover the existing REE

approaches reported in the

existing REE literature

RQ6 What are the RE activities

that were addressed in REE

literature?

To identify in which RE

activities REE researchers

are interested in

RQ7 Were REE approaches

reported in literature based

on RE curricula?

To discover if researchers

take into consideration RE

curricula in REE

approaches design

Fig. 2 The primary studies selection process

122 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

•for journals:

•(?2) if it is ranked Q1,

•(?1.5) if it is ranked Q2,

•(?1) if it is ranked Q3 or Q4

•(?0) If it has no JCR ranking.

•for others; (?0).

The score for the quality criterion (d) refers to the fact

that journals are more advantageous than conferences,

workshops, and symposia because the authors believe that

the possibility of publishing work in Q1 or Q2 journal may

be more difﬁcult than in other publication channels. The

sum of the four closed-question scores for each study

provided a ﬁnal score (an integer between 0 and 5).

3.5 Data extraction strategy and synthesis method

The data extraction strategy was based on providing the set

of possible answers to research questions.

RQ1. To answer this question, publication source and

channel for each paper should be identiﬁed.

RQ2. To draw the publication trend, articles should be

classiﬁed per publication year.

RQ3. A research type can be classiﬁed into the

following categories [30]:

•Evaluation Research: An evaluation or an investiga-

tion of REE approaches is conducted. This also

includes the identiﬁcation of problems in REE.

•Solution Proposal: A solution to REE problems is

proposed. This solution may be novel or a signiﬁcant

extension of an existing approach. The potential

beneﬁts and the applicability of the solution are

shown with a small example or a good

argumentation.

•Experience Papers: These papers must express the

author’s personal experience and explain what has

been done and how it was realized in practice.

•Other: e.g., Theoretical papers, opinion papers,

reviews.

RQ4. The empirical research type can be classiﬁed into

[36,37]:

•Case study: An empirical inquiry that investigates a

phenomenon within its real-life context. This term

may refer to single or multiple case studies.

•Survey: A method for collecting quantitative infor-

mation concerning items in REE, e.g., a

questionnaire.

•Experiment: An empirical method applied under

controlled conditions and using students as subjects

in order to observe its effects on REE.

RQ5. An approach can be classiﬁed into the following

categories as proposed in [19,38].

•Method: A means or manner of procedure and a

series of steps taken to acquire knowledge in REE.

•Tool: Anything used as a means to accomplish a task

or purpose in REE.

•Model: A representation of a system that allows for

investigation of the properties of REE to be

investigated.

•Guideline: An indication of policy or procedure by

which a course of action in REE can be determined.

•Framework: A real or conceptual structure intended

to serve as a support or guide for the building of

something that expands the structure into something

useful in REE.

RQ6. Upon considering the SWEBOK [12] RE KA

breakdown, RE activities can be classiﬁed into the

following:

•Requirements process. A paper is categorized into

this criterion if it discusses all RE activities in detail.

•Requirements elicitation. If the paper reports how

and where to collect RE.

•Requirements analysis. If the paper discusses

requirements classiﬁcation, conceptual modeling,

architectural design, and requirements allocation.

•Requirements speciﬁcation. If the paper shows the

procedure of the production of a document, or its

electronic equivalent, which can be systematically

reviewed, evaluated, and approved.

•Requirements validation. If the paper presents the

process used to examine the requirements documents

to ensure that the right system is being deﬁned.

•Requirements engineering. If the paper does not

discuss any RE activity and if it mentions RE in

general.

RQ7. The word ‘‘curricula’’ in this question refers to

model curricula, bodies of knowledge, and standards

deﬁned in Sect. 2The answer to this question can be

classiﬁed into: SWEBOK, CCSE, CCCS, IS, GSwE,

REBOK, SEEK, IEEE 830, IEEE 1233, IEEE 1465,

ISO/IEC TR 24766, ISO/IEC 25030, or Other.

The synthesis method is based on counting the primary

studies that are classiﬁed in each of the RQ responses,

presenting a ranking of the primary studies based on their

QA, and ﬁnally, presenting charts for the classiﬁcation

result. A variety of evaluation approaches have been used

in the analysis of the results and a narrative summary with

which to recount the principal ﬁndings of this systematic

mapping study and describe them is presented in the

discussion.

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 123

123

4 Results

This section describes the results related to the systematic

mapping questions presented in Table 1. Some studies

were chosen to illustrate examples of each RQ’s result. We

consider that they are relevant and make an important

contribution to REE.

4.1 Selection results

Of the 148 articles deeply investigated, 69 papers were

discarded and 79 were ﬁnally selected. The 79 papers

identiﬁed were analyzed in order to answer the RQs

explained above. Table 2presents the list of the selected

papers with details of the overall classiﬁcation results and

their QA.

4.2 RQ1. Which publication channels are the main

targets for REE research?

Table 3lists all the sources, the different publication

channels, and the number of articles per publication source.

Four different publication channels were identiﬁed in

addition to one technical report and a working paper.

About 46 % of the selected papers appeared in workshops,

39 % were presented at conferences, 9 % were published

in journals, and 4 % were presented at symposia. Two

reports were also included in the systematic mapping study.

Note that 38 % of the selected papers were published in the

International Workshop on REE and training (REET).

4.3 RQ2. How has the frequency of approaches related

to REE changed over time?

Figure 3presents the number of articles published per year

from 1995 to 2012. There are three apparent outliers in the

years 2005 and 2008. The reason for this result is that some

selected papers were published in workshops as it is shown

in Fig. 3. Workshops and especially REET workshop

impacted the trend of REE publications per year.

The REET workshop started in 2005. The next editions

of this workshop were held yearly after 2007, which

explains the drop in publications on 2006. The spike of

other sources on 2008 is explained by the fact that on this

year, 4 articles were presented in the IEEE International

Requirements Engineering Conference. The reader will also

notice that in 1996, 1998, and 2001, no articles were pub-

lished. That could be explained by the fact that REE gained

interest on the beginning of the last decades after the pub-

lication of software engineering BoK and RE standards. The

decrease in 2012 may be explained by the point in time at

which this mapping study was performed and probably does

not reﬂect the real number of articles in 2012.

4.4 RQ3. What are the research types of REE studies?

Four research types were identiﬁed in this systematic

mapping study. Evaluation research (17 articles), solution

proposal (31 papers), experience paper (30 papers), and one

review. Theoretical papers or opinion papers were not

found in the REE literature. Around 77 % of the selected

papers (solution proposal and experience paper) therefore

present a solution to an REE problem, while 22 % evaluate

REE approaches, and one paper reviews the methods

reported in the REE literature. Examples of research types

are presented in the following paragraph.

Regev et al. [8] described their experience in teaching

an RE course. The course used an active, affective, expe-

riential pedagogy giving students the opportunity to expe-

rience a simulated work environment which demonstrates

the social/design-problem complexities and richness of a

development organization in the throws of creating a new

product. Davis et al. [97] proposed an approach that was

designed to facilitate life-long learning and stimulate the

continuous improvement of RE practice. One of the most

signiﬁcant planned contributions of their project was the

establishment of a test bed in order to integrate RE research

and education which has a direct impact on practice. Hai-

ney et al. [40] evaluated a game to teach requirements

collection and analysis in software engineering at tertiary

education level. The results indicate that the game did not

meet the expectations of Further Education (FE) learners

(college level) to the same degree as the Higher Education

(HE) learners (university level). The approach seems to be

more suited to HE learners in terms of knowledge acqui-

sition, aspects of the game, and perceptions as opposed to

FE learners.

4.5 RQ4. Are REE studies empirically validated?

The result for this question revealed that 34 % of the

studies are not empirical studies because they do not pro-

vide any type of validation and do not present any proof of

concept. About 52 % of the nonempirical studies identiﬁed

in this paper suggest solutions with which to enhance REE

without empirically validating the proposed approaches.

Another 44 % of the nonempirical studies report their

authors’ experiences in teaching RE. A review [112] was

also identiﬁed, which presents a comparison of practitio-

ners’ perspectives of the usefulness of the RE content

knowledge included in higher education programs. In

around 38 % of the selected papers, experiments were

conducted with students in order to evaluate the effec-

tiveness of the authors’ approach in REE. 6 % of the papers

reported case studies in industry, and 22 % reported the

results of surveys.

124 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

Table 2 Classiﬁcation

References Classiﬁcation Quality assessment

P. Channel P. Year Research type Empirical

type

Approach RE activity Curricula (a) (b) (c) (d) Score

[7] Workshop 2004 Evaluation research Survey Model Process CCCS 1 0.5 1 1 3.5

[8] Conference 2008 Experience paper Experiment Method Engineering No 1 1 1 1.5 4.5

[16] Conference 2008 Solution proposal Survey Tool Process Other 1 1 1 1.5 4.5

[17] Conference 2003 Experience paper Experiment Tool Process SWEBOK 1 1 1 1.5 4.5

[31] Conference 2010 Evaluation research Survey Guideline Engineering No 1 0.5 1 0.5 3

[39] Conference 2006 Experience paper Experiment Method Process No 1 1 1 1.5 4.5

[40] Journal 2011 Evaluation research Experiment Method Analysis No 1 0.5 1 2 4.5

[41] Journal 2007 Evaluation research Experiment Tool Engineering No 1 0.5 1 2 4.5

[42] Symposium 2011 Experience paper Survey Model Process No 1 1 1 1.5 4.5

[43] Workshop 2004 Solution proposal Experiment Framework Engineering No 1 1 1 1 4

[44] Conference 2004 Experience paper Survey Method Process No 1 1 1 1 4

[45] Conference 2008 Evaluation research Survey Tool Engineering No 1 0.5 1 1.5 4

[46] Conference 2008 Evaluation research Survey Method Process Other 1 0.5 1 1.5 4

[47] Conference 2000 Experience paper Survey Method Analysis No 1 1 1 1 4

[48] Conference 2005 Experience paper Case study Method Process No 1 1 1 1 4

[49] Conference 2007 Evaluation research Experiment Method Process No 1 0.5 1 1.5 4

[50] Conference 2005 Solution proposal Survey Framework Process No 1 1 1 1 4

[51] Symposium 2008 Evaluation research Survey Model Engineering No 1 0.5 1 1.5 4

[52] Conference 1995 Solution proposal Experiment Tool Elicitation No 1 1 1 1 4

[53] Conference 1999 Solution proposal Experiment Model Analysis No 1 1 1 1 4

[54] Conference 2009 Solution proposal Experiment Method Process SWEBOK 1 1 1 0.5 3.5

[55] Conference 2006 Experience paper Experiment Method Process No 1 1 1 0.5 3.5

[56] Journal 2009 Experience paper No Method Process No 1 1 0 1.5 3.5

[57] Conference 2009 Solution proposal No Model Engineering No 1 1 0 1.5 3.5

[58] Workshop 2008 Experience paper Experiment Framework Engineering No 1 1 1 0 3

[59] Workshop 2008 Experience paper Experiment Guideline Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[60] Workshop 2011 Experience paper Experiment Method Engineering No 1 1 1 0 3

[61] Conference 2009 Experience paper Survey Method Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[62] Workshop 2005 Experience paper Experiment Method Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[63] Conference 2010 Experience paper Experiment Method Engineering No 1 1 1 0 3

[64] Workshop 2010 Solution proposal Survey Method Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[65] Technical report 1997 Experience paper Experiment Tool Engineering No 1 1 1 0 3

[66] Workshop 2005 Experience paper Experiment Guideline Process SEEK 1 1 1 0 3

[67] Workshop 2007 Solution proposal Experiment Method Process Other 1 1 1 0 3

[68] Workshop 2009 Solution proposal Experiment Method Process SWEBOK 1 1 1 0 3

[69] Conference 2003 Experience paper No Method Elicitation IEEE830 1 1 0 1 3

[70] Workshop 2007 Experience paper Experiment Method Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[71] Workshop 2005 Solution proposal Experiment Method Process CCSE 1 1 1 0 3

[72] Working paper 2002 Solution proposal Experiment Framework Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[73] Conference 2011 Solution proposal Experiment Tool Process No 1 1 1 0 3

[74] Conference 2012 Solution proposal Case study Method Engineering No 1 1 1 0 3

[75] Conference 2008 Solution proposal No Tool Elicitation No 1 1 0 1 3

[76] Conference 2000 Experience paper No Method Process No 1 1 0 1 3

[77] Journal 2004 Solution proposal Experiment Tool Speciﬁcation IEEE1233 1 1 1 0 3

[78] Conference 2005 Evaluation research Survey Method Process CCSE 1 0.5 1 0.5 3

[79] Workshop 2005 Solution proposal Experiment Method Process SWEBOK 1 1 1 0 3

[80] Journal 2010 Solution proposal Survey Tool Elicitation No 1 1 1 0 3

[81] Conference 2011 Evaluation research Experiment Method Analysis No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 125

123

Note that if the paper selected indicates that it contains a

case study and the authors used students as subjects for

their case study, then according to our classiﬁcation crite-

ria, it is classiﬁed as an experiment. All of these empirical

studies were carried out by using previously trained stu-

dents who had a high level of control as regards the study.

The students ﬁrst received lectures about an RE topic (for

example, the tools and methodologies used to manage

requirements) and then applied the knowledge and skills

acquired to the design of a system or even the creation of a

physical product in a laboratory environment. The inves-

tigations identiﬁed could be repeated under identical con-

ditions. The studies therefore had execution control and

ease of replication, which are the research strategy factors

of an experiment, not a case study. According to Wohlin

et al. [113], ‘‘the difference between case studies and

experiments is that experiments sample over variables that

are being manipulated, while case studies sample from the

variables representing the typical situation.’’ In our opin-

ion, a case study that is carried out with students in the

environments described does not represent a typical situa-

tion that is suitable for the industrial evaluation of RE

methods and tools because the students are manipulated by

the researchers to act in a deﬁned scenario.

Figure 4shows that around the half of the solution

proposals and experience papers were empirically vali-

dated through experiments. It also shows that in order to

evaluate an existing approach, authors mainly use

Table 2 continued

References Classiﬁcation Quality assessment

P. Channel P. Year Research type Empirical

type

Approach RE activity Curricula (a) (b) (c) (d) Score

[82] Workshop 2007 Experience paper Case study Method Process No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[83] Workshop 2005 Experience paper No Model Process No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[84] Workshop 2005 Evaluation research Experiment Method Engineering CCSE 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[85] Workshop 2011 Evaluation research Experiment Method Engineering No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[86] Conference 2012 Evaluation research Survey Method Engineering No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[87] Workshop 2010 Evaluation research Experiment Method Process No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[88] Workshop 2005 Evaluation research Survey Model Process No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[89] Workshop 2007 Evaluation research Case study Model Analysis No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[90] Workshop 2007 Evaluation research Case study Method Process No 1 0.5 1 0 2.5

[91] Workshop 2008 Experience paper No Tool Elicitation No 1 1 0 0 2

[92] Workshop 2012 Solution proposal No Method Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[93] Workshop 2010 Solution proposal No Method Analysis No 1 1 0 0 2

[94] Workshop 2005 Solution proposal No Guideline Elicitation No 1 1 0 0 2

[95] Workshop 2008 Experience paper No Method Process No 1 1 0 0 2

[96] Workshop 2004 Experience paper No Method Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[97] Workshop 2005 Experience paper No Method Process Other 1 1 0 0 2

[98] Workshop 2005 Experience paper No Method Process CCSE 1 1 0 0 2

[99] Workshop 2008 Solution proposal No Method Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[100] Conference 2005 Experience paper No Method Elicitation No 1 1 0 0 2

[101] Workshop 2008 Solution proposal No Tool Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[102] Workshop 2008 Solution proposal No Model Process No 1 1 0 0 2

[103] Workshop 2010 Solution proposal Survey Method Process IEEE830 1 1 0 0 2

[104] Journal 2012 Solution proposal No Method Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[105] Journal 2011 Solution proposal No Tool Engineering No 1 1 0 0 2

[106] Symposium 2010 Solution proposal No Tool Process No 1 1 0 0 2

[107] Conference 2008 Solution proposal No Tool Elicitation No 1 1 0 0 2

[108] Conference 2009 Solution proposal No Tool Elicitation No 1 1 0 0 2

[109] Conference 2005 Experience paper No Guideline Process IEEE830 1 1 0 0 2

[110] Workshop 2011 Solution proposal No Method Analysis No 1 1 0 0 2

[111] Workshop 2009 Experience paper No Model Process SWEBOK 1 1 0 0 2

[112] Workshop 2005 Review No Method Process No 1 0.5 0 0 1.5

126 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

Table 3 Publication source

Publication source Channel References No. %

International Workshop on requirements engineering

education and training

Workshop [58–60,62,64,66–68,70,71,79,82–85,87–91,

93–95,97,98,102,103,110–112]

30 37.97

IEEE international requirements engineering conference Conference [8,16,17,45,46,57] 6 7.59

Conference on software engineering education & training Conference [31,54,55,78] 4 5.06

ASEE/IEEE rrontiers in education conference Conference [52,53,69,76] 4 5.06

IEEE international conference and workshop on the

engineering of computer-based systems

Conference [44,48] 2 2.53

Australian workshop on requirements engineering Workshop [7,43] 2 2.53

International workshop on multimedia and enjoyable

requirements engineering

Workshop [99,101] 2 2.53

International workshop on advances and applications of

problem frames

Workshop [96] 1 1.27

International workshop on software engineering education

based on real-world experiences

Workshop [92] 1 1.27

International world scientiﬁc and engineering academy and

society conference

Conference [86] 1 1.27

Malaysian conference in software engineering Conference [81] 1 1.27

Mexican international conference on computer science Conference [108] 1 1.27

Norsk informatikkonferanse conference Conference [63] 1 1.27

ACM special interest group on computer science education

conference

Conference [39] 1 1.27

World academy of science, engineering and technology Conference [109] 1 1.27

International technology, education and development

conference

Conference [73] 1 1.27

International business conference Conference [50] 1 1.27

Australian software engineering conference Conference [47] 1 1.27

IEEE international conference on advanced learning

technologies

Conference [75] 1 1.27

IEEE international conference on computer science and

automation engineering

Conference [74] 1 1.27

International conference on computing in civil engineering Conference [100] 1 1.27

International conference on information technology: new

generations

Conference [61] 1 1.27

International conference on intelligent virtual agents Conference [107] 1 1.27

International conference on software engineering Conference [49] 1 1.27

Symposium of the special commission of games and digital

entertainment

Symposium [106] 1 1.27

ACM-IEEE international symposium on empirical software

engineering and measurement

Symposium [51] 1 1.27

Symposium on computer science education Symposium [42] 1 1.27

Computers & education journal Journal [40] 1 1.27

Empirical software engineering Journal [41] 1 1.27

International journal of computer applications Journal [104] 1 1.27

International Journal of Computer Science Issues Journal [105] 1 1.27

International journal of engineering education Journal [77] 1 1.27

Requirements engineering journal Journal [56] 1 1.27

Revista Facultad de Ingeniera Universidad de Antioquia Journal [80] 1 1.27

Technical report Other [65] 1 1.27

Working paper Other [72] 1 1.27

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 127

123

questionnaires or conduct experiments. Examples of REE

empirical research are mentioned in the following

paragraph.

Beatty and Alexander [45] conducted an experience to

evaluate the existing research on the use of games in

training and their application to RE training. The authors’

experiences, the existing research, and theories from the

ﬁeld of learning led them to conclude that games appeared

to be transferable and applicable to training in RE. Mead

et al. [68] presented a case study to validate a compre-

hensive teaching model for security Requirements Engi-

neering that centered on the employment of the SQUARE

method [114]. The results showed that when students learn

about security Requirements Engineering using SQUARE,

they have a better understanding of what is needed to

produce more secure software. Svahnberg et al. [51]

investigated students’ abilities to understand and assess

multiple perspective (basic skills, state of practice, and

state of the art) involvement in the requirements selection

process. The authors performed a survey in relation to

requirements selection as part of an Advanced Course on

Requirements Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Tech-

nology. The results indicated that students have a good

understanding of the way industry acts in the context of

requirements selection and that students may work well as

subjects in empirical studies in this area. Memon et al. [31]

attempted to assess the status of REE courses offered in

major public universities in Malaysia. The aim of their

paper was to discover out the problems that students con-

front on an RE course and compare them with those pre-

sented in the REE literature. The survey results conﬁrmed

many of the problems presented in the literature but also

explored insights that may encourage researchers to be

aware of the limitations of the way in which RE courses are

commonly conducted.

4.6 RQ5. What are the approaches that were reported

in REE research that address REE problems?

The majority of all research type approaches describe

methods. About 20 % of REE approaches describe tools

and 16 % describe models. Guidelines (6 %) and frame-

works (5 %) are also proposed as solutions to REE prob-

lems. Figure 5shows that the majority of authors report

Fig. 3 Number of articles published per year

Fig. 4 Research types and empirical type

Fig. 5 Approaches

128 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

their experience in delivering REE course methods. With

regard to proposing solutions, the authors’ tend to propose

both methods and tools. Models were almost equally

reported in solution proposals, in experience papers and in

evaluation research. The framework approach (in this

context ’framework’ is considered to be a structure that

forms a frame for REE) is mainly reported as an REE

proposed solution, while the guideline approach is reported

as the authors’ approach experience. Some of the REE

approaches reported in the selected papers are listed below.

Callele and Makaroff [39] presented a second-year

computer science course designed to simulate appreciation

for the need for RE and to provide students with an

opportunity to engage in RE activity. Damien et al. [62]

described a course that was taught in collaboration between

three universities in different locations, time zones, and

culture: Canada, Australia, and Italy. The students from the

three locations played the roles of a client and developer

and experienced the iterative development of requirements

speciﬁcation in global projects. Smith and Gotel [16]

designed the RE-O-Poly game to explain and explore good

RE practices. Since requirements are often conﬂicting,

players have to learn to resolve conﬂicts and determine

priorities in the game. Zowghi and Paryani [17] used role

playing as a pedagogical tool to provide their students with

a fuller appreciation of the range of both technical and

nontechnical issues involved in RE practices. Knauss et al.

[101] presented a Web-based simulation game, which was

easy to understand and fun to play within just a few min-

utes in order to take RE more seriously. The Software

Quantum game helps students to understand one of the

principal challenges of RE which is to build the right

system within the available time. Barnes, Gause, and Way

[59] described sample techniques for the teaching of the

unknown (e.g., recommendations about requirements for

disaster recovery) and unknowable (e.g., requirements to

predict future trends) in RE for systems design and pre-

sented their experiences in teaching as part of requirements

analysis in an engineering systems design class. Armarego

[43] presented an approach based on problem-based

learning (PBL) which attempts to provide students with a

solid foundation in the subject matter while simultaneously

exposing them to real-world characteristics. It provides

students with a process to deal with problems within a

metacognitive-rich framework that makes complexity

apparent and allows students deal with it in an adaptive

manner.

4.7 RQ6. What are the RE activities that were

addressed in the REE literature?

About 52 % of the selected papers present approaches for

requirements processes, and 27 % of the selected papers

did not specify any RE activity and were therefore clas-

siﬁed under Requirements Engineering. Requirements

elicitation was reported in 11 % of the selected papers,

9 % discussed requirements analysis, and only one paper

discussed requirements speciﬁcation, while no require-

ments validation were identiﬁed. In Fig. 6, the answers

for RQ3, RQ4, and RQ5 were combined in order to

establish a mapping with the aim of providing an over-

view of RE activities. This mapping has allowed us to

obtain more information on how the results from each RQ

are related to the others. The diagram presents the

research facet related to RE activity, distributed over

approaches and research types. This ﬁgure allows us to

conclude that only one tool was proposed as a solution for

requirements speciﬁcation that authors mainly report their

experience in teaching requirements processes and that

the majority of the solution proposals concern require-

ments processes. In addition, most of the REE tools are

designed for requirements elicitation activities. Further

information regarding the relationship between the three

facets is shown in Fig. 6.

4.8 RQ7. Were REE approaches reported

in the literature based on RE curricula?

Only 24 % of the selected papers take into consideration

RE model curricula, BoKs, or standards. SWEBOK, CCSE,

and IEEE std 830 are the main RE sources for authors.

Other curricula were identiﬁed: Business Analyst BOdy of

Knowledge (BABOK), IEEE Std 9003, and Requirements

Engineering Good Practice Guide (REGPG).

4.9 Quality assessment

Table 5presents the quality assessment score for each

paper. About 59 % of the selected papers had an above

average score, and 13 % had an average score, while 28 %

were below average. This quality assessment may help

REE scholars to choose the relevant papers according to

the criteria deﬁned in Sect. 3.4.

5 Discussion and implication

This section summarizes and discusses the results related to

the systematic mapping study. Advice for instructors is also

proposed in this section.

5.1 Principal ﬁndings

The goal of this systematic mapping study was to examine

the current knowledge in REE by selecting 79 papers from

a total of 148. They were then classiﬁed according to ﬁve

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 129

123

criteria: research type, empirical type, approach type, RE

activity, and RE model curricula. The principal ﬁndings of

our study are the following:

•The REE research area has gained increasing attention

since 2004, and 2005 marked the shift in the REE

publication trend as it was the year in which an

International Workshop on REET began. About 46 %

of the selected papers were published in workshops,

while only 9 % had reached the maturity of a journal

publication. However, upon taking into consideration,

the yearly Chaos Report series conducted by the

Standish Group [3] and the studies [5,115,116] that

demonstrate the criticality of RE with regard to the

success of SE projects, we believe that REE will

probably gain much more attention in the future.

•About 77 % of the selected papers reported solutions to

REE. This result shows that the REE ﬁeld has not yet

attained sufﬁcient maturity for evaluation and that the

main concern for REE researchers is to propose

approaches with which to enhance REE. This is also

shown by the fact that experience papers reporting the

authors’ teaching experience and solution proposals

were the most common research types found in the

literature. The objective of the solutions identiﬁed in

this study is principally to address students’ lack of

awareness of RE principles and practices in the

development of software projects [39,50] and their

lack of interest in RE courses [16,101].

•The most frequently reported approaches in the selected

papers were methods which were mainly reported as

RE courses. Some authors shared their teaching expe-

rience [8,44,70,76] or their course designs [54,74,

103] in order to present solutions to REE. Other authors

preferred to evaluate the efﬁciency of the existing

training and teaching programs [40,46] and their

impact on REE improvement. Another approach cate-

gory that has received attention was that of tools.

Authors proposed games as teaching tools because

games are fun and engaging and provide friendly

competition [16,17,80,106]. Many of the approaches

identiﬁed were suggested to enhance REE and to

replace traditional RE course teaching methods, such as

the use of simulated project examples that do not

provide the students with a realistic experience of

client–developer interaction [8,42].

Fig. 6 RE activities

Table 4 Curricula

Curricula References Total

SWEBOK [17,54,68,79,111]5

SEEK [66]1

CCSE [71,78,84,98]4

CCCS [7]1

IEEE Std 830 [69,103,109]3

IEEE Std 1233 [77]1

Other [16,46,67,97]4

Table 5 Quality assessment

References Score Total

[112] 1.5 1

[91–111] 2 21

[81–90] 2.5 10

[31,58–80] 3 24

[7,54–57] 3.5 5

[43–53] 4 11

[8,16,17,39–42] 4.5 7

130 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

•In 38 % of the selected papers, the authors conducted

experiences, and in only 6 % of the selected articles did

they include industrial case studies in their research. In

RE, a case study is an observational study which

usually aims to track a speciﬁc attribute or identify

relationships between different attributes [113]. The

reduced number of studies identiﬁed in this category

can be justiﬁed by the amount of people involved and

the inherent difﬁculty of ﬁnding industrial projects.

What is more, in 22 % of the selected papers, the

authors used surveys to collect quantitative information

about REE approaches. About 73 % of the selected

papers were empirical studies and 58 % of these

empirical studies used students as subjects. A common

criticism of controlled experiments in which students

are used as subjects is their external validity, and it is

therefore difﬁcult to generalize the results to industrial

settings [117]. However, the study by Svahnberg et al.

[51] shows that in certain circumstances, it may be

possible to use students as subjects for empirical studies

and to inﬂuence them to provide answers that are in line

with industrial practice.

•Around the half of the selected papers presented

approaches for requirements processes. About 11 %

discussed requirements elicitation, 9 % requirements

analysis, and only one paper discussed requirements

speciﬁcation. No study for requirements validation was

reported. Researchers mainly propose approaches with

which to address the teaching of requirements process

that involves the general aspects of RE. More research

is needed to address the broad teaching of each RE

activity, and more attention should be paid to require-

ments validation.

•The main RE sources identiﬁed that inspired authors

were SWEBOK, CCSE, and IEEE std 830. However,

only a quarter of the selected studies took into

consideration the well-known RE model curricula,

BoKs, and standards in the design of their REE

approaches. This result shows that the remaining

approaches do not conform to curricula, BoKs, or

standards.

•About 24 % of the courses reported in the selected

papers were designed for undergraduate students, and

around 16 % were designed for professional engineers,

while only 9 % could be carried out with both

undergraduate and post graduate students. More

research is therefore needed to assess new teaching

methods and tools in postgraduate courses which

requires the acquisition of a more specialized knowl-

edge of the RE discipline.

•The main audience interested in this systematic map-

ping study could be instructors in the ﬁeld of REE,

since the majority of the REE literature is written by

teachers and instructors. To support this statement, two

points were investigated: the afﬁliation of the authors

and the publication source. About 84 % of the papers

selected were written by instructors from universities,

while 10 % were written by professionals who are

mainly consultants, and 6 % were written jointly

between instructors and professionals. Only a few

practitioners therefore appear to be interested in REE.

Also, as it was mentioned in the RQ1 result, around

46 % of the selected papers appeared in REE-related

workshops and 39 % in conferences, which are mainly

held for instructors in order to give them the opportu-

nity to share their knowledge and experiences. Observe

that no paper was found in IEEE Transactions on

Education journal, which is one of the most important

journals related to education and computer science.

5.2 Implications and advice for instructors

The ﬁndings of our systematic mapping study have

implications for instructors who are working in REE, since

this study will allow them to discover the existing

approaches in the literature concerning REE and to exploit

combined approaches in REE. Moreover, the empirical

studies presented can provide an overview of the efﬁciency

of each approach. In order to improve the quality of RE

courses, instructors could take into consideration some

advice.

These pieces of advice are addressed toward instructors

since they are probably the main audience interested in this

systematic mapping study, as has been demonstrated in the

previous section. The studies cited in this section were

chosen by considering their content. First, those papers in

the mapping study that provided any kind of practical

guidance for REE were classiﬁed among those found in the

‘‘Study selection’’ phase, by reading their abstracts. Sec-

ond, one author carried out an in-depth review of previ-

ously selected papers in order to make recommendations

for the teaching of RE. No predeﬁned templates or

guidelines were used in this screening process. During this

process, important problems in RE training and discussions

addressing key issues in RE were searched for. Recom-

mendations were extracted from the papers as provided by

the authors, and their original purpose and meaning were

maintained.

According to the literature reviewed [16,31,39–41,45,

101], various issues have been identiﬁed to be considered

in this section. Other sources have also been identiﬁed

[118–128], which are not necessarily REE focused, but are

related to these issues; in that, they provide interesting

complementary information regarding the following

recommendations:

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 131

123

•Teach how to deﬁne scope of the problem and avoid

general and vague speciﬁcations [39]. In order to

address this issue, instructors can take into account the

different personalities of students when teaching an RE

course. Instructors can ask the students to answer a

questionnaire in order to discover their personality

traits. The results of this questionnaire will allow the

instructors to form teams which exhibit a better

performance. Previous studies [119] show a signiﬁcant

positive correlation between the personality factor

extraversion and software product quality, including

satisﬁed requirements.

•Show how to select and use an RE tool. More than 100

RE tools can be found on the market [120]. Students

should be aware of the features that the current RE tools

provide and should be taught how to select the best tool

for a project, according to its needs: requirements

elicitation, requirements analysis, requirements speci-

ﬁcation, requirements veriﬁcation and validation, and

requirements management.

•Promote activities in requirements analysis and model-

ing in addition to requirements management and

introduce the concept of prototyping in the course.

Prototyping is an important technique in the RE phase

[121]. Through prototyping, an executable model of the

software product can be achieved before the ﬁnal

product has been created [122]. Moreover, prototypes

presented to stakeholders are very effective in ensuring

valid requirements [123]. A part of the course could be

devoted to prototyping the system described in the

Software Requirements Speciﬁcation (SRS) and the

enterprise models. Students should rewrite the SRS and

submit an executive summary, including features such

as Return On Investment (ROI) in a nontechnical

language [41]. The difﬁculties involved in learning

these issues on RE courses have been identiﬁed in the

literature [31].

•Involve students in industrial projects in order to allow

them to acquire sufﬁcient knowledge and practice,

especially on postgraduate courses. Instructors could

also invite industry practitioners to present real projects

and to describe their accumulated industrial experience.

The difﬁculties involved in how to apply RE knowl-

edge in the real world have been reported in the

literature [41,118]. By providing the student with an

accurate view of reality and the adequate tools,

instructors can offer them the opportunity to attain a

critical mindset in order to deal with RE in practice.

•Have the ability, skills, and strategies needed to align

RE courses with contemporary global software devel-

opment (GSD) conditions. REE must adapt to meet the

changing demands in the global development environ-

ment. Instructors can refer to the experience by Damien

et al. [124] in designing and evaluating a framework to

teach GSD courses and to extract ideas that can be

implemented in RE courses.

•Familiarize students with approaches to problem solv-

ing, development methodologies, and development

tools [31]. Instructors can improve their courses by

using some of the solutions proposed in Sect. 4.6. RE

courses are often given in a traditional lecture/exercise

format [41]. It often occurs that students do not place

importance on RE activities and do not see their impact

on the success or failure of projects [101]. Instructors

are encouraged to include alternatives approaches in the

curricula. Some studies [16,40,45,101,125] have

shown that learning through play provides a successful

education experience. In general, game playing consists

of rules, goals, engagement, challenge, feedback, fun,

interactivity, outcome. and immediate reward.

•Use mobile devices as teaching tools. Mobile phones

are a particularly attractive avenue for delivering

courses and training in REE. M-learning (learning with

mobile devices) promises a continued extension toward

‘‘anywhere, anytime’’ learning [126]. Instructors can

deliver their courses in an interactive classroom: The

students can share a virtual whiteboard, electronic

textbook, and data over a networked environment to

actively participate in the course discussions [127].

These devices will encourage students to share their

knowledge, and students will be far more active than on

traditional courses. We propose that instructors refer to

the experience of Yau et al. [128] in order to adopt the

concept of a smart classroom which facilitates collab-

orative learning among students and can be adapted to

REE.

5.3 Threats to validity

Four kinds of threats to validity are discussed below.

•Construct validity: Construct threats to validity in a

mapping study are related to the identiﬁcation of

primary studies [129,130]. In order to ensure that as

many relevant primary studies as possible were being

included, two authors identiﬁed and proposed potential

search keywords in several iterations. Seven terms

related to RE and nine terms related to education were

used in the search string. However, the list might not

have been complete, and additional or alternative terms

might have altered the ﬁnal list of papers found [131].

The search was performed by using IEEE Digital

Library, ACM Digital Library, Science Direct, and

Google Scholar. According to the statistics of literature

search engines [132], we believe that most of the

research on RE can be found in these electronic

132 Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138

123

libraries. To decrease the risk of missing related and

important publications, the authors also sought related

papers in major RE research venues (e.g., REJ, ER,

REFSQ, ICSE, TSE).

We believe that the inclusion of publication sources

that are not top journals and conferences in the review

might decrease the quality standards of the primary

studies, but it signiﬁes that the representativeness of the

primary studies is increased. In particular, the REET

workshop is an essential venue when undertaking a

study on REE, in spite of its reducing the mean score

for primary studies in Table 2(2.94 out of 5).

Moreover, certain papers may have been overlooked as

the result of the subscription limitations of our univer-

sity library, as was the case of two conference papers

found in the IEEE Digital Library. This problem was

overcome by asking the authors of the papers to provide

us with a copy of their published articles.

Another threat concerns the potential mishandling of

duplications, which might have slightly altered our

results. Two cases of possible duplication were

detected, which were examined exhaustively to dis-

cover whether or not they were the same study.

Although certain content elements were common to

different papers, these papers are based on innovative

ideas or new studies.

The ﬁnal decision to select a study depended on the two

authors who conducted the search process. If a

disagreement arose between them, then a discussion

took place until an agreement was reached.

Finally, note that although the same papers were not

found in a replication of this secondary study (which is

only possible in a relatively narrow area with experts in

the area conducting the study), the same general

conclusions may be drawn [133].

•Internal validity: Internal validity deals with extraction

and data analysis [129,130]. Two authors carried out

the data extraction and classiﬁcation of the primary

studies, while the other two authors reviewed the ﬁnal

results.

The decision as to which data to collect and how to

classify the papers therefore depended on the judge-

ment of the two authors conducting the systematic

mapping study. These authors who were from different

culture and research groups carried out two different

classiﬁcations for reliability purposes [134].

The Kappa coefﬁcient was 0.95, reﬂecting a high level

of agreement between the authors, which indicates a

similar understanding of relevance, thus reducing this

threat signiﬁcantly. The authors were in different time

zones and communicated with each other using video-

conferencing via Skype, and therefore needed to agree

on a timetable for their meetings to avoid them

becoming tired—a situation that is identiﬁed as a threat

in literature [135].

Data extraction from prose could also result in a

misclassiﬁcation, but this problem was addressed by

developing a classiﬁcation scheme on the basis of

widely accepted guidelines [12] and terminology pro-

posed for use in RE [136]. This would, therefore, only

have a minor inﬂuence on the general classiﬁcation

derived in this study.

•Conclusion validity: The threat to conclusion validity is

concerned with the identiﬁcation of incorrect relation-

ships which may lead to incorrect conclusions. In the

case of a mapping study, this threat refers to factors

such as missing studies and incorrect data extraction

[130].

The aim is to control these factors so that a systematic

mapping study can be performed by other researchers

[129,131,137] who will draw the same conclusions

[134].

Bias both as regards selecting and classifying primary

studies and analyzing data may therefore affect the

interpretation of the results. In order to mitigate this

threat, every step performed in the selection and data

extraction activity was clearly described as discussed in

the previous paragraphs.

The traceability between the data extracted and the

conclusions was strengthened through the direct gen-

eration of bubble plots and frequency plots from the

data by using a statistical package. In our opinion,

slight differences based on publication selection bias

and misclassiﬁcation would not alter the main conclu-

sions drawn from the 79 articles identiﬁed in our

mapping study.

•External validity: External validity is concerned with

the generalization of this study [113,137,138]. The

systematic mapping results were considered with regard

to the RE domain, and the validity of the conclusions

drawn in this paper concerns only the REE context.

Since no time restriction was introduced in the search

for published studies, the representativeness of the

selected studies was not affected. This threat is not

therefore present in this context.

The search string and the classiﬁcation scheme pre-

sented in this paper may serve as a starting point for RE

researchers, and practitioners can search for and cate-

gorize additional papers accordingly.

6 Conclusions and future work

This paper has presented a systematic mapping study that

summarizes the existing research in REE. Of 1359 studies,

148 papers were identiﬁed between 1995 and 2012, 79 of

Requirements Eng (2015) 20:119–138 133

123

which were selected and classiﬁed according to ﬁve crite-

ria: research type, empirical type, approach type, RE

activity, and RE model curricula. Publication source and

trend were also identiﬁed.

The results obtained showed that an increasing amount

of attention has been paid to REE since 2004. Around half

of the selected papers appeared in workshops, and only a

few papers had reached the maturity of a journal publica-

tion. The two main research types found were experience

papers and solution proposals. The majority of the selected

papers were empirical studies. Many papers proposed

solutions to address the education of RE, and the main

contribution types were methods. The RE process is the

most frequently addressed RE activity in the literature, and

few authors take into consideration model curricula, bodies

of knowledge or standards in the design of their REE

approaches.

This research could be a starting point to investigate

better ways in which to give RE courses in the future.

Furthermore, the REE approaches presented in this study

may help instructors to identify approaches that can be

adopted in order to improve the quality of their courses.

For future research on REE, greater presence in journals

should be considered and more attention should be paid to

the teaching of each RE activity, particularly requirements

speciﬁcation and validation. More evaluation research

should be carried out in order to evaluate existing REE

approaches. Moreover, it is advised that future proposed

approaches should conform to the existing model curricula,

BoKs, or standards.

Ongoing research is based on performing a systematic

literature review to assess the research on REE by taking

into consideration the results found in this systematic

mapping study and performing a joint experiment

between the University of Murcia and the University of

Mohammed V Souissi in Rabat in order to study the RE

in GSD.

Acknowledgments This research is part of the project PEGASO-

PANGEA (TIN2009-13718-C02-02) ﬁnanced by the Spanish Minis-

try of Science and Innovation (Spain), and also part of the GEODAS-

REQ project (TIN2012-37493-C03-02) ﬁnanced by the Spanish

Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This research is also part

of the project Software Project Management using Data Mining

Techniques, (AP2010-2013), ﬁnanced by Mohammed V Souissi

University (Morocco). The mobility grant of Soﬁa Ouhbi is ﬁnanced

by the Mediterranean Ofﬁce for Youth (MOY).

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Software Testing Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2021

Software Testing is the core part of computer science & engineering curriculum. It has been observed that software testing has been taught much in Computer science & engineering disciplines at undergraduate level. Software Testing Education (STE) involves time, cost, risk, quality, integration, communication, human resource, and procurement management skills. The STE at undergraduate and graduate level is a challenging task because it also requires knowledge and experience. This article aims to investigate and synthesize the state-of-the-art research in STE for the improvement of STE curriculum, pedagogical tools and techniques, cognitive, empirical and assessments methods. STE research approaches has been categorized into five categories including empirical type, research approaches, software testing education processes, key areas, and curricula. The ninety-seven articles for the area of STE have been chosen after rigorous systematic screening process published in during 2004 to 2021. Furthermore, tools and techniques, testing processes, pedagogy and student performance are the frequently addressed in STE; whereas assessment methods, gamification, curriculum and exemplary program development appeared as mostly ignored areas. Lastly, research gaps and challenges relate to STE has been presented as future directions for the faculty, software industry, and researchers.

Building soft skills through a role-play based approach for Requirements Engineering remote education

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J Braz Comput Soc

Teaching Requirements Engineering requires adopting pedagogical techniques to develop students' technical skills for identifying users' needs and designing software solutions. Additionally, since requirements engineering involves group work, students must cultivate social skills such as communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. In remote learning scenarios, developing these skills becomes more challenging due to limited interaction. To address these needs, this paper proposes adapting a project-based collaborative learning approach for remote education that combines Role-Play and Send-a-Problem learning techniques. In this approach, students collaborate on software projects in teams, assuming two roles: customers and software developers. We evaluated this approach during two cycles of Action Research, conducted remotely in two disciplines of a Software Engineering undergraduate course involving advanced and beginner students, respectively. In the advanced students' class, we observed that the methodology enhanced communication skills, analytical reasoning, conflict resolution, and empathy. To validate these results, we conducted a new study with beginning students, achieving positive outcomes despite the need for more support in team communication. As our primary contribution, we provide guidelines for implementing this collaborative learning approach online.

Work in Progress: On Teaching Requirements in Engineering Design

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Jul 2021

Alexander Pagano

Enterprise Architecture and IT Governance to Support the BizDevOps Approach: a Systematic Mapping Study

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Feb 2024
INFORM SYST FRONT

Current software development practices are transforming the governance and management of software projects with the objective of aligning software products/services with business needs, ensuring business continuity, optimizing resource allocation, and fostering strong stakeholder relationships. The innovative BizDevOps approach has emerged as a response to these challenges, since it extends DevOps by incorporating an additional cycle and involving non-IT stakeholders with a focus on business-IT alignment. The application of IT Governance practices is crucial as regards ensuring the success of complex BizDevOps projects, and this paper, therefore, presents a systematic mapping study that explores the approaches for BizDevOps and encourages DevOps proposals that will seamlessly integrate with the business lifecycle. It examines the support provided by IT Governance practices and investigates the potential roles of Enterprise Architecture. The study analyzed 86 primary studies and 11 secondary studies, revealing a lack of empirical validations and a prevalence of recommendation-oriented papers without concrete solution proposals. These findings highlight the need for further research with which to validate BizDevOps practices and provide actionable insights.

Explanation of A Framework for the Effective Implementation of E-Learning at Universities of Medical Sciences: A Mixed Exploratory Method

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Abstract Background: E-learning is considered the most important technology that can support new teaching-learning approaches. The objective of e-learning is to provide the same access and create the same educational space for all learners at any point, and optimize the methods of presenting course content for deeper and more serious learning. Objectives: The present study was conducted to develop a standard framework for the effective implementation of e-learning in medical science education. Methods: This study was conducted in two phases in 2022 using a mixed exploratory method. In the first (qualitative) phase, the initial framework was obtained from a comparative review of existing literature. In the second (quantitative) phase, the calculated standards were prepared in the form of an online questionnaire and sent to 20 e-learning experts in medical sciences. After data analysis, a framework of e-learning standards were proposed. Results: Nine dimensions and 58 standards were approved as the framework of e-learning standards. The lowest and highest content validity ratio (CVR) based on the analyzes were reported to be 0.77 and 0.88, respectively. As a result, all dimensions and 58 standards were approved. Also, the intraclass correlation (ICC) between 0.75 and 0.90 showed good reliability and high agreement between experts. Conclusion: Using a standard framework to implement e-learning helps to improve the quality of e-learning courses in medical sciences and brings more trust from internal and external stakeholders in these courses. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the field of education and attempt to make educational organizations work in the best way in any situation, such as the fact that the world has recently been exposed to the o COVID-19 pandemic which led to the tendency of universities to use it. Keywords: E-learning, Medical Science Universities, E-Learning Standards, Delphi Technique

How Social Media Influencers Impact Consumer Behaviour? Systematic Literature Review

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Businesses invest considerable sums in influencer marketing efforts as social media influencers (SMIs) continue to gain popularity. To understand how marketers might utilize influencer marketing as a strategy in the digital era, researchers are still examining the effectiveness and impact of using SMIs. Accordingly, this article aims to conduct a systematic literature review of the impact of SMIs on consumer behaviour. Based on 90 studies, our systematic review was carried out following the PRISMA guidelines. This comprehensive review of literature intends to demonstrate the various impacts of SMIs on consumer behaviour, particularly about consumer decision-making, consumer attention, consumer brand admiration, consumer self-expression and consumer purchase intention. We outline influencer-led campaign techniques that can help companies develop closer ties with their customers and produce successful brand outcomes. In addition, the research synthesizes disparate literature to advance our comprehension of the mechanisms generating SMI attributes and the variables influencing consumer reactions to influencer endorsements. Future studies in the area will be aided by a nomological framework that incorporates significant antecedents, mediators and moderators of potential outcomes.

Cross-Platform Mobile Development Approaches and Frameworks

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The use of mobile applications is rapidly increasing, due to rapid development of smartphones. Mobile apps, on the other hand, are platform-specific, making development more difficult and expensive. Cross platform or multiplatform application development is a fairly new idea in which developers apply a single code to create apps for several platforms like Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iOS etc. With the rising usage of these frameworks, it is important to comprehend both contributions and limitations in this emerging field. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the research studies in the field of cross platform mobile app Development including approaches and tools. The SLR has been compiled by reviewing the research studies published between 2012-2022 in reputed venues. A Total of 22 studies has been selected and classified by using systematic process. The review has been presented on cross platform approaches, tools and challenges. Further an approach has been proposed for cross platform mobile application development. Finally, open issues and challenges in the field of cross platform have been presented to provide future direction to the researchers.

Text Summarization Techniques Using Natural Language Processing: A Systematic Literature Review

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In recent years, data has been growing rapidly in almost every domain. Due to this excessiveness of data, there is a need for an automatic text summarizer that summarizes long and numerical data especially textual data without losing its content. Text summarization has been under research for decades and researchers used different summarization methods by using natural language processing and combining various algorithms. This paper presents a systematic literature review by showing a survey of text summarization methods and explains the accuracy of these methods used for text summarization. The paper first introduced some concepts of extractive and abstractive text summarization and also define how deep learning models can be used for the improvement of text summarization. This paper aims to identify the current utilization of text summarization in different application domains. Different methodologies are discussed for text summarization. To carry out this SLR, twenty-four published articles have been chosen carefully for this domain. Moreover, it discusses issues and challenges which are investigated in different application domains using text summarization methods. Lastly, the existing work of different researchers has been carried out for further discussion.

Model-Based Testing of Web Application: An SLR

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Website applications surpass system-based applications because they are nature friendly and installation free. Additionally, model-based testing is more beneficial under website applications as it saves time and money. Moreover, it detects fault lines at a higher speed. With the commencement of web application testing and model-based testing, various tools and models have been introduced in the domain of web application. In this milieu, systematical identification got significant importance to analyze MBT. To analyze the MBT, articles published between the years 2000 to 2022 are collected. From the total of 6115 papers are analyzed and 43 papers are selected. The presented SLR of MBT for the web application presents a comprehensive review of all the models and tools proposed in the literature. Furthermore, the taxonomy is defined about the models and steps followed in MBT. Lastly, the challenges and gaps are addressed. Hence, it is also helpful for researchers to avert the obstacles in the field of MBT for website applications.

Learning Gaps in Project-based Requirements Engineering Education - A Case Study of Student Projects

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Systematic Mapping Studies in Software Engineering

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MSIS 2006: Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems

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Jan 2006

This article presents the MSIS 2006 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems. As with MSIS 2000 and its predecessors, the objective is to create a model for schools designing or revising an MS curriculum in Information Systems. The curriculum was designed by a joint committee of the Association for Information Systems and the Association for Computing Machinery. MSIS2006 is a major update of MSIS 2000. Features include increasing the number of required courses from 10 to 12 while revising prerequisites, introducing new courses and revising existing courses to modernize the curriculum, and alternatives for phased upgrading from MSIS2000 to MSIS 2006.

Requirements engineering: a roadmap

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jan 2000

Development of a game to support the teaching of Requirements Engineering: The Requirements Island

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Nov 2010

The Requirements Engineering process has been appointed as the origin of the main failures of software projects. One possible reason for that is because most of the students starts their professional life without the required experience to execute Requirements Engineering tasks. The consequence is the projects cannot reach the customer's expectative and needs, once the application of Requirements Engineering good practices is usually missing. The main goal of this work is to support the teaching of Requirements Engineering in Computer Science courses through an educational game. The game should stimulate the students to review the concepts and understand the execution of tasks related to the Requirements Engineering process. The game background is a playful story, which it shows the consequences of applying or not applying Requirements Engineering tasks to solve problems. The use of a playful background is to offer more ease learning, making this process fun and more natural. We present similar games to evaluate the positive characteristics in order to aggregate value to our game. It is presented the story for the game "The Requirements Island", its rules and its mechanism. We also present the instructional design, showing the relationship between each game challenge and this respective level in Bloom Taxonomy. At last, we discuss the results of two evaluation experiments, where we applied statistical methods to verify the game learning effect and its contribution as a learning tool.

Prototyping in industrial software projects-bridging the gap between theory and practice

Conference Paper

Jan 1993

Developing Requirements Engineering Skills: A Case Study in Training Practitioners

Conference Paper

Jul 2007

Vassilis Agouridas

The Kluwer International Series in Software Engineering

Book

Jan 2000

Experiences of teaching problem frame based requirements engineering to undergraduates

Conference Paper

Jan 2004

I.K. Bray

The teaching of requirements engineering at Bournemouth University has incorporated a problem frame based approach to analysis since 1997. Various factors have shaped the aims, content and delivery of the programme. Current practice and outcomes are described and may prove of interest to those involved in teaching requirements engineering.

Teaching Requirements Engineering using Experimental Learning

Conference Paper

Jun 2012

Asbjørn Danielsen

The software industries use of Requirements Engineering (RE) is obstructed by the industries relatively poor understanding of RE practices and benefits. Teaching RE at university level is in this context an important endeavor. This paper reports on an experimental approach on teaching RE and the results recorded during two years at Narvik University College. The course described in this paper uses experimental pedagogy to give the students experience in close to real-life work environment, demonstrating social and problem complexity of RE. The course uses social simulations rather than software simulations, making the students learn through interactions with real people and confronted with the complexity of social relationships.

Teaching to Think in Software Terms: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Software Requirement Engineering Course for AEC Students

Conference Paper

Jun 2005

Software is no longer developed and discussed only by computer science majors. Software development and engineering is a professional concentration area in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) fields, among many others. Graduates of AEC related fields, who are motivated by problems which can be addressed better with computation or with better computation, often return to school to pursue graduate studies devoted to understanding computation of the professional problems they encounter. These students understand discipline specific issues in their fields well. However, in contrast to computer science majors, they lack techniques that can help them formulate solutions in software engineering terms. Asking such students to take classes from computer science curricula fosters interdisciplinary thinking; however, this practice fails to address the specialized computational needs of the AEC fields. An in depth understanding of how to use software development as a problem analysis approach can provide AEC students, both in the graduate and undergraduate levels, with problem classification techniques that they need. Here, we will describe our experience in introducing graduate AEC students to software requirement elicitation and development process techniques.

Requirements engineering education: A systematic mapping study

Abstract

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