A Taxonomy for Requirements Engineering and Software Test Alignment
(2014) In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 23(2).- Abstract
- Requirements Engineering and Software Testing are mature areas and have seen a lot of research. Nevertheless, their interactions have been sparsely explored beyond the concept of traceability. To fill this gap we propose a definition of requirements engineering and software test (REST) alignment, a taxonomy that characterizes the methods linking the respective areas, and a process to assess alignment. The taxonomy can support researchers to identify new opportunities for investigation, as well as practitioners to compare alignment methods and evaluate alignment, or lack thereof. We constructed the REST taxonomy by analyzing alignment methods published in literature, iteratively validating the emerging dimensions. The resulting concept of... (More)
- Requirements Engineering and Software Testing are mature areas and have seen a lot of research. Nevertheless, their interactions have been sparsely explored beyond the concept of traceability. To fill this gap we propose a definition of requirements engineering and software test (REST) alignment, a taxonomy that characterizes the methods linking the respective areas, and a process to assess alignment. The taxonomy can support researchers to identify new opportunities for investigation, as well as practitioners to compare alignment methods and evaluate alignment, or lack thereof. We constructed the REST taxonomy by analyzing alignment methods published in literature, iteratively validating the emerging dimensions. The resulting concept of an information dyad characterizes the exchange of information required for any alignment to take place. We demonstrate use of the taxonomy by applying it on five in-depth cases and illustrate angles of analysis on a set of thirteen alignment methods. In addition we developed an assessment framework (REST-bench), applied it in an industrial assessment, and showed that it, with a low effort, can identify opportunities to improve REST alignment. Although we expect that the taxonomy can be further refined, we believe that the information dyad is a valid and useful construct to understand alignment. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/4247558
- author
- Unterkalmsteiner, Michael ; Feldt, Robert and Gorschek, Tony
- publishing date
- 2014
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- alignment, software process assessment, software testing, requirements engineering, taxonomy
- in
- ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
- volume
- 23
- issue
- 2
- publisher
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:84897975506
- ISSN
- 1049-331X
- DOI
- 10.1145/2523088
- project
- Embedded Applications Software Engineering
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- e6e77bb9-a76a-4561-b1b7-819af047e7f1 (old id 4247558)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 09:08:12
- date last changed
- 2022-03-23 04:10:56
@article{e6e77bb9-a76a-4561-b1b7-819af047e7f1,
abstract = {{Requirements Engineering and Software Testing are mature areas and have seen a lot of research. Nevertheless, their interactions have been sparsely explored beyond the concept of traceability. To fill this gap we propose a definition of requirements engineering and software test (REST) alignment, a taxonomy that characterizes the methods linking the respective areas, and a process to assess alignment. The taxonomy can support researchers to identify new opportunities for investigation, as well as practitioners to compare alignment methods and evaluate alignment, or lack thereof. We constructed the REST taxonomy by analyzing alignment methods published in literature, iteratively validating the emerging dimensions. The resulting concept of an information dyad characterizes the exchange of information required for any alignment to take place. We demonstrate use of the taxonomy by applying it on five in-depth cases and illustrate angles of analysis on a set of thirteen alignment methods. In addition we developed an assessment framework (REST-bench), applied it in an industrial assessment, and showed that it, with a low effort, can identify opportunities to improve REST alignment. Although we expect that the taxonomy can be further refined, we believe that the information dyad is a valid and useful construct to understand alignment.}},
author = {{Unterkalmsteiner, Michael and Feldt, Robert and Gorschek, Tony}},
issn = {{1049-331X}},
keywords = {{alignment; software process assessment; software testing; requirements engineering; taxonomy}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{2}},
publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
series = {{ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology}},
title = {{A Taxonomy for Requirements Engineering and Software Test Alignment}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2523088}},
doi = {{10.1145/2523088}},
volume = {{23}},
year = {{2014}},
}