Exploring the role of requirements engineering in improving risk management

There is limited evidence (Brooks (1987), Fosberg and Mooz (2000) and S. Robertson and J. Robertson (1999)) which supports claims in literature that requirements engineering (RE) can have positive effects on an organization´s ability to manage project risk. Such evidence can serve to motivate industrial adoption of requirements engineering techniques, but it can also contribute to our understanding of the role of RE in supporting project management activities. This paper presents an analysis of the causal relationship between RE practice and benefits in risk management in one software organization that revised its RE process and enjoyed improvements in its project management activities. In particular, we present insights from our investigation of the interaction between the RE process and the processes of project planning and SQA. We found that elements of the RE process such as feature decomposition, structure documentation and traceability links improved feature sizing and enabled effective change management, contributing to improved risk management activities. These findings are useful to practitioners in similar software organizations whose product release objectives originate from a remote business unit and who currently suffer from significant feature creep.