Inadequate Requirements Engineering Process: A Key Factor for Poor Software Development in Developing Nations: A Case Study

Authors: K. Adu Michael, K. Alese Boniface

Abstract:

Developing a reliable and sustainable software products is today a big challenge among up–coming software developers in Nigeria. The inability to develop a comprehensive problem statement needed to execute proper requirements engineering process is missing. The need to describe the ‘what’ of a system in one document, written in a natural language is a major step in the overall process of Software Engineering. Requirements Engineering is a process use to discover, analyze and validate system requirements. This process is needed in reducing software errors at the early stage of the development of software. The importance of each of the steps in Requirements Engineering is clearly explained in the context of using detailed problem statement from client/customer to get an overview of an existing system along with expectations from the new system. This paper elicits inadequate Requirements Engineering principle as the major cause of poor software development in developing nations using a case study of final year computer science students of a tertiary-education institution in Nigeria.

Keywords: Client/Customer, Problem Statement, Requirements Engineering, Software Developers.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1094671

References:

[1] K.K. Aggrwal, S. Yogesh, Software Engineering. 3rd ed. New Delhi: New Age International Publishers Limited, 2008.
[2] M. Early, Relating software requirements to software design. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 11(3), 37-39. 1986
[3] J.A. Hoffer, J. F. George, & J.S. Valacich, Modern systems analysis and design, 2005.
[4] J. Karlsson & K. Ryan, Supporting the Selection of Software Requirements. Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design, 146, 1996
[5] D. Martin, J. Rooksby & M. Rouncefield, ‘Users as contextual features of software product development and testing’. Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Conference on supporting group work, 301-310, 2007.
[6] S.L. Pfleeger, Software Engineering. Theory and Practice. Prentice Hall, 2001.
[7] J. Verner, K. Cox & S.J. Bleistein, ‘Predicting Good Requirements for in-house Development Projects.’ Proceedings of the 2006 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, 154-163, 2006.