Two Replication Studies for Evaluating Artefact Models in RE: Results and Lessons Learnt

Artefact-based requirements engineering (RE) describes the idea of establishing a company-wide reference model by putting the focus on the RE artefacts and their dependencies rather than dictating a strict process with interconnected methods. Although we could make first empirical studies on the benefits and shortcomings of artefact-based RE, however, we still have little evidence for our first results. The reason is that the conducted case studies focus on the isolated application of artefact-based RE approaches in individual socio-economic contexts and, thus, the findings can hardly be generalised. The contribution of this paper is to report on two conducted replication studies to strengthen our confidence on the benefits and shortcomings of applying artefact orientation in RE. To this end, we replicated an industrial case study with partners from two companies. Those replications form part of a research project where all partners are working with the same artefact-based RE approach and its tool-supported realisation. Our results give deeper insights into artefact-based RE and contribute to a reliable database due to comparability among the studies. This allows for first conclusions on the actual impact artefact orientation has on RE.