Question

If an environment does not currently engage in solid requirements engineering practices, should tools be introduced?

Answer 1

One of the criticisms of the requirements engineering practices in agile processes is that documentation is not always rigorously captured. Studies support the notion that agile practitioners do not always use the kinds of tools that can assist in project management and capture appropriate artifacts during systems development. For example, Kassab (2014) found that only about 50% of practitioners using agile methodologies indicated that tools were used for requirements engineering.

Certain tools, however, can play an important role in ensuring that documentation artifacts are recorded, thus enriching that agile process. For example, UML modeling tools can help to capture elements of requirements documentation. Agile teams can also use advanced communications such as Web-based shared team projects and instant messaging tools to keep in touch with customers and team members when off-site. The artifacts from these tools can then be captured and converted to elements of the requirements specification.

Researchers have also found that agile project would also benefits from using requirements traceability tools together with validation tools. Integrated acceptance testing tools such as Cucumber also improve the quality of requirements and testing documentation (De Lucia and Qusef 2010).