An Empirical Analysis of the Usageand Impact of RequirementsAttributes on RequirementsEngineering Research and Practice : A mixed method approach

Context: Requirement Engineering (RE) is one of the important phases inthe development of any software. Hence, there is a need to take much careon the elicitation and management of these requirements. Attributes playan important role in order to store and manage the important informationabout the requirements. There has been a lot of research performed inthe literature regarding the attributes of requirements engineering, but stillthere is a gap in the research that is concerned to requirement attributesin particular. Hence we focused more on identification and management ofthese requirement attributes. Objectives: In the current thesis, we focused mainly on the requirementattributes used in the companies and how they are managed. The majorobjectives we have framed in order to achieve our aim are: 1. To identify the publication trends in the literature of requirementsengineering that mainly focus on requirement attributes. 2. To identify the requirement attributes that are used by the softwarecompanies which includes both global attributes and project specificattributes. 3. To investigate how the requirement engineering models impact theselection of requirement attributes in companies. 4. To identify the phase and sequence of the requirement attributesbased on the four phases (elicitation, analysis, documentation and validation)of requirements engineering. 5. To investigate how the requirement attributes help in documentingand managing the continuous changes to requirements. Methods: In this thesis, we have performed Systematic Mapping Study(SMS),Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Survey methods in order to achieveour aim and objectives. SLR is performed through the snowballing procedurebased on the guidelines of Wohlin[1].SMS is performed based on theguidelines of petersen et al.[2]. The main aim of the SMS is to identifythe publication trends in the literature on requirements engineering. Themain aim of SLR is to extract important information about the RE modelsand changes in requirements engineering. The main aim of the Survey is tovalidate the information retrieved from the SLR. Results: 83 requirement attributes were identified through the SLR outof which 15 attributes are in common. These 15 attributes are includedin the survey questionnaire. From these attributes, ID and description areidentified as most commonly used attributes from the survey. Publication trends related to requirement attributes are observed from the past 25 yearsrequirement attributes. From the survey, it is observed that there is a highimpact of RE models on requirement attributes. It is also observed thatmaximum number of attributes is stored in the form of documents and indatabases by the companies and the attributes are generally documented inanalysis phase and in specification phase. Results from the survey indicatedthat there is no particular sequence to document the attributes and theyare identified and documented based on the needs. Conclusions: This thesis lists different attributes that are used by thecompanies and also gives important information about the requirement attributesin detail that is close to the practical scenarios. It also gives scopefor further researches related to requirement attributes. This thesis helpthe practitioners to know the importance of consideration of requirementattributes in developing a project and its advantages. This work can beextended further by considering large number of attributes and retrievingresponses and opinions by large population