Development of Situational Requirements Engineering Processes: A Process Factory Approach

The Software Product Line (SPL) approach is a paradigm for systematic reuse of software products, and a Software Factory is a SPL aimed at the industrialization of software development. Based on the notion that a software/RE process can be developed via an engineering process (much akin to engineering other types of software), this research aims to provide a feature-based RE process factory to develop RE processes based on the characteristics of the project at hand (project situation). In our approach, the project situation is modeled as the problem domain through using the i* modeling language (resulting in a situation model). A feature model can encapsulate all the features in an SPL; therefore, the abundant riches of the RE field -- results of decades of research -- have been explored for extracting the variations and commonalities among existing RE processes, the results of which are represented in the form of a feature model, considered as a model of the solution domain. In order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed feature model, it has been compared against RE-related activities found in prominent software development methodologies. A mapping for translating the situation model to the RE process feature model is proposed with the specific aim of promoting traceability and rationality in the selection of RE process features. The efficacy of the approach is demonstrated through an RE process development example.