Search

[Context & motivation] Growing software companies with increasing product complexity face the issue of how to scale up their Requirements Engineering (RE) practices. In market-driven requirements engineering, release planning and scoping decisions are increasingly challenging as the size and complexity increases. [Problem] This paper presents initial results of an on-going exploratory, qualitative investigation of three market-driven, industrial cases with the objective of increasing our understanding of challenges in scaling up requirements engineering and how these challenges are addressed by the studied companies. [Results] Through 13 interviews in three companies, requirements engineering scalability issues are explored related to scoping and the structure of RE artifacts. [Contribution] The main contribution are findings related to increasing RE scale based on interpretations of the experienced interviewees’ views.

CONTENTS: 1) NAVAIR's Coast-to-Coast Support of the E-2C Hawkeye Using Distributed TSP by Linda Lou Crosby and Jeff Schwalb: This article discusses a Naval Air Systems Command distributed team that became an example of how projects can work together remotely and be successful. 2) Improving Consistency of Use Case Points Estimates by Dr. David J. Coe: This article presents experimental data on the use of the Use Case Points method to estimate development effort for a semester-scale software product. 3) Good Practices for Developing User Requirements by Ellen Gottesdiener: This article provides a requirements model road map that helps software development teams understand the effective use of requirements models. 4) Tabular Notations for State Machine-Based Specifications by Markus Herrmannsdoerfer, Dr. Sascha Konrad, and Brian Berenbach: This article describes five approaches using tabular notations for state machine-based specifications and evaluates these approaches for use in software development. 5) Addressing the Challenges of Tactical Information Management in Net-Centric Systems With DDS by Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt, Dr. Angelo Corsaro, and Hans Van't Hag: This article presents an architectural overview of the Object Management Group Data Distribution Service., CrossTalk,The Journal of Defense Software Engineering is co-sponsored by the Department of Defense Chief Information Office (DoD-CIO); the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L); U.S. Navy (USN); U.S. Air Force (USAF); and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DoD-CIO co-sponsor: Assistant Secretary of Defense (Networks and Information Integration). OSD (AT&L) co-sponsor: Software Engineering and System Assurance.USN cosponsor: Naval Air Systems Command. USAF cosponsors: Oklahoma City-Air Logistics Center (ALC) 76 Software Maintenance Group (SMXG); and Ogden-ALC 309 SMXG. DHS co-sponsor: National Cyber Security Division in the National Protection and Programs Directorate. The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.