Selecting Communication Artifacts for Requirements Engineering

In this paper, we identify and explicate the factors that lead organizations to select particular communication artifacts in the requirements engineering (RE) process and to determine the communication artifacts that they prefer in particular RE phases and with which RE methods. We do so to improve RE communication. Information systems (IS) projects often fail due to poorly specified or misunderstood requirements. We articulate a process framework for RE, which serves as a basis for our discussing and analyzing RE communication artifacts. In doing so, we extend the RE process by adding two transitional phases (pre-validation and pre-approval) to ensure that organizations identify all of the essential requirements. We employ qualitative methods to identify the criteria for selecting communication artifacts. We discover that organizational culture plays a key role in this process. Our findings suggest that the traditional phases occur more in organizations that use waterfall development processes than in organizations that agile development methods