Requirements Engineering Challenges in Large-Scale Agile System Development

Motivated by their success in software development, companies implement agile methods and their practices increasingly for software-intense, large products, such as cars, telecommunication infrastructure, and embedded systems. Such systems are usually subject to safety and regulative concerns as wel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering pp. 352 - 361
Main Authors Kasauli, Rashidah, Liebel, Grischa, Knauss, Eric, Gopakumar, Swathi, Kanagwa, Benjamin
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.09.2017
Subjects
Automotive engineering
Companies
Conferences
Interviews
large-scale agile
Large-scale systems
Programvaruteknik
requirements engineering
Software
Software Engineering
system engineering
Telecommunications
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Summary:Motivated by their success in software development, companies implement agile methods and their practices increasingly for software-intense, large products, such as cars, telecommunication infrastructure, and embedded systems. Such systems are usually subject to safety and regulative concerns as well as different development cycles of hardware and software. Consequently, requirements engineering involves upfront and detailed analysis, which can be at odds with agile (software) development. In this paper, we present results from a multiple case study with two car manufacturers, a telecommunications company, and a technology company that are on the journey to introduce organization wide continuous integration and continuous delivery to customers. Based on 20 qualitative interviews, 5 focus groups, and 2 cross-company workshops, we discuss possible scopes of agile methods within system development, the consequences this has on the role of requirements, and the challenges that arise from the interplay of requirements engineering and agile methods in large-scale system development. These relate in particular to communicating and managing knowledge about a) customer value and b) the system under development. We conclude that better alignment of a holistic requirements model with agile development practices promises rich gains in development speed, flexibility, and overall quality of software and systems.
ISBN:1538631911
9781538631911
ISSN:2332-6441
1090-705X
2332-6441
DOI:10.1109/RE.2017.60