The Field of Requirements Engineering Education

Abstract

Requirements engineering (RE) is an essential part of the software development process. Good RE, among others, is the basis for high quality software, considerably reduces the risk for software projects to fail entirely or with budget-overspending and is crucial for coordinating systems and software engineering. Thus, RE education is a vital part of software engineering curricula. However, a central concept of what RE education comprise and how to best teach RE is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review of the field and provide a systematic map describing the state of the RE education field. Results for key trends in RE instruction of the past decade include involvement of real or realistic stakeholders, teaching predominantly elicitation as an RE activity, and increasing student factors such as motivation or communication skills.