Requirements Engineering Challenges in Large-Scale Agile System Development

Abstract

We aim to discuss our recent publication at the International Conference on Requirements Engineering 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. 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. As a consequence of safety and regulative concerns as well as different development cycles of hardware and software, detailed, up-front requirements engineering (RE) can be at odds with agile (software) development. 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 arising from the interplay of RE and agile methods in large-scale system development. These relate to communicating and managing knowledge about a) customer value and b) the system under development. 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.