View publication
| Title | Requirements engineering in the pre-contract stage: exploring the processes and practices used in small and medium-sized software enterprises |
| Authors | Tomás Vera, Sergio Ochoa, Daniel Perovich |
| Publication date | 2021 |
| Abstract | Performing requirements engineering (RE) during the pre-contract stage; i.e., at pre-selling time, is mandatory for software providers to conceive a project proposal and deliver a bid. In bespoke projects, this process requires that providers deal with several constraints that are usually not present in a regular RE process. For instance, the process must be done quickly, under a competition situation, and hopefully involving few resources since its cost is assumed by the provider. These constraints make this process unique, and different to the RE conducted at post-selling; i.e., during a project contract. Few is reported about the RE activities performed in practice by providers, the cost-effectiveness of the process, and the software practices used to support it. This article presents an exploratory study that uses a mixed method approach to gain knowledge on these aspects. The results indicate that providers assume this process as unstructured, context-aware, expert-based and with various possible outcomes. In part, these features are a consequence of the constraints imposed by the project pre-contract scenario. Moreover, the providers use regular RE practices to support this process, which usually ends up having a medium-low cost-effectiveness. These results show the need to perform more empirical research in this domain, and open several opportunities to propose new RE techniques and practices (or adjust the existing ones) to improve the cost-effectiveness of this process. |
| Pages | 1346-1353 |
| Conference name | ACM Symposium on Applied Computing |
| Publisher | ACM Press (New York, NY, USA) |
| Reference URL |
|