Implementing Requirements Engineering Processes: Using Cooperative Self-Assessment and Improvement

As enterprises become increasingly aware of requirements engineering's importance, many have been tempted to invest in improving corresponding processes. Unfortunately, many process improvement approaches for requirements engineering don't meet small enterprises' needs and are often hard to apply in small companies. The ReqMan process improvement approach considers small organizations' specific needs by involving employees in the improvement process, enabling them to make improvement decisions rather than having external consultants make the decisions. During the last two years, this approach has been successfully applied in case studies, resulting in strong, positive stakeholder participation in the improvement discussion and high acceptance of the improvements, even by persons who were normally skeptical about improvement activities.