Agile Software Development (ASD) is becoming more popular in all fields of industry. For an agile transformation, organizations need to continuously improve their established approaches to Requirements Engineering (RE) as well as their approaches to software development. This is accompanied by some challenges in terms of agile RE. The main objective of this paper is to identify the most important challenges in agile RE industry has to face today. Therefore, we conducted an iterative expert judgement process with 26 experts in the field of ASD, comprising three complementary rounds. In sum, we identified 20 challenges in three rounds. Six of these challenges are defined as key challenges. Based on the results, we provide options for dealing with those key challenges by means of agile techniques and tools. The results show that the identified challenges are often not limited to ASD, but they rather refer to software development in general. Therefore, we can conclude that organizations still struggle with agile transition and understanding agile values, in particular, in terms of stakeholder and user involvement.

1. KEY CHALLENGES IN
AGILE REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING
Eva-Maria Schön, University of Seville and CGI
Dominique Winter, REWE Digital
Maria J. Escalona, University of Seville
Jörg Thomaschewski, University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer
XP2017 - May 22-26, Cologne (Germany)

2. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 2
CONTEXT

3. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 3
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
RQ1 What are the key challenges in
Agile Requirements Engineering?
RQ2 How can we deal with the
identified key challenges?

4. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 4
RESEARCH METHOD
• Iterative expert judgement process
• Rooted in a Delphi study
• Anonymity among experts to avoid
influence of dominant individuals
• Controlled feedback with statistical
group response
► Main benefit: use the learnings from a previous iteration
for carrying out the following iterations.
3
ROUNDS

5. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 5
ITERATIVE EXPERT JUDGEMENT PROCESS
Construction of
questionnaire
Pretest
Invitation of
experts
Data gathering
(2 weeks)
Evaluation of
results
(2 weeks)
iterate
starting next round
• Round 1: open questions
• Round 2: closed questions, comments
• Round 3: closed questions, open questions, comments

6. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 6
PANEL OF EXPERTS
• 26 experts
• Working in 19 different companies located
in Germany and Switzerland
• 2-10 years of experience working in ASD
(average = 6.14 years)
• 0-16 years of experience with RE
(average = 6.65 years)
know-how in
terms of Agile
very low
1 2 3 4 5 know-how in
terms of Agile
very high0.0% 0.0% 15.4% 69.2% 15.4%

7. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 7
PANEL OF EXPERTS
25
22
6
5
4
4
24
8
12
5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Scrum
Kanban
Extreme Programming (XP)
Lean
SAFe
LeSS
Waterfall model
PRINCE2
V-Modell / V-Modell xT
Other
Amount of participants (N=26)
Typeofmethodology

8. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 8
ROUND 1
Question round 1 Answer given by expert
What challenge do you perceive with
requirements in terms of Agile Software
Development?
Stakeholders affected by requirements or changing the system
are not involved.
Why do you consider this challenge as
important?
In one of my projects, representatives of end users did not
really knew the pain of end users. Even the early UI
prototypes were tested by incorrect stakeholders, which led to
risks of conflicts and failure.
• We received 107 items (see example above)
• Items were categorized in a workshop by the authors
• Full results can be found on ResearchGate: http://bit.ly/2kS44nE

9. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 9
ROUND 2
• 34 items were assed (see example above)
• Related to categories: stakeholder and user involvement (6 items), understanding agile and
agile values (6 items), RE methods (10 items), iteration planning and estimation (6 items)
and format of requirements (6 items)
• Full results can be found on ResearchGate: http://bit.ly/2lKcgrG

10. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 10
ROUND 3
• 20 potential key challenges of agile RE were queried
• Experts optionally had the chance to provide a solution
for solving the challenge
• 22 experts filled in the questionnaire
• Definition key challenge: 2/3 of the experts’ answers were:
“Yes, it is a challenge”
• Identification of six key challenges
• Full results can be found on ResearchGate:
http://bit.ly/2kwLgag

11. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 11
KEY CHALLENGE 1
In agile software development functional or technical
dependencies with other teams are a challenge because a
considerable coordination effort is required.
N YES NO
17 14 (82.4%) 3 (17.6%)

12. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 12
KEY CHALLENGE 2
In agile software development it is a challenge that
stakeholders understand that the development team can make
independent (detailed) decisions.
N YES NO
20 15 (75.0%) 5 (25.0%)

13. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 13
KEY CHALLENGE 3
In agile software development it is a challenge not to lose sight
of the big picture during the implementation of complex
requirements.
N YES NO
20 15 (75.0%) 5 (25.0%)

14. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 14
KEY CHALLENGE 4
In agile software development continuous management of
requirements is a challenge since not all of them are fixed at the
beginning and they may change over the course of the project.
N YES NO
22 16 (72.7%) 6 (27.3%)

15. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 15
KEY CHALLENGE 5
In agile software development it is a challenge to work out user
requirements and quality of use in cooperation with direct
users (end users) of the product.
N YES NO
18 13 (72.2%) 5 (27.8%)

16. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 16
KEY CHALLENGE 6
In agile software development it is a challenge to involve
stakeholders throughout the whole development process in
regular iterations, so that product development will succeed.
N YES NO
20 14 (70.0%) 6 (30.0%)

17. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 17
AGILE RE PATTERNS
Agile RE
problem
Agile
technique
is solved by ►
1..* 1..*

18. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 18
CONCLUSION
• Identified 20 challenges industry has to address at present in terms of agile RE
• Six of these challenges have been defined as key challenges
• Analyzed options to deal with those key challenges by means of agile techniques
• Identified challenges are often not limited to ASD, but they would
rather refer to software development in general
• Organizations still struggle with agile transition and understanding
agile values, in particular, in terms of stakeholder and user involvement

19. Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering 19
FUTURE RESEARCH
• Identify challenges in agile RE by means of an international panel of experts
• Quantitative analyses of identified 20 challenges
• Analyze whether the challenges appear in terms of RE in general
• Knowledge sharing by means of agile RE patterns
• Tool support by means of a web application

20. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Do you have feedback or questions?
eva.schoen@iwt2.org
Eva-Maria Schön, University of Seville and CGI
Dominique Winter, REWE Digital
Maria J. Escalona, University of Seville
Jörg Thomaschewski, University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer
XP2017 - May 22-26, Cologne (Germany)