Is Requirements Engineering Inherently Counterproductive?

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility that requirements engineering is, in principle, detrimental to software project success. Requirements engineering is conceptually divided into two distinct processes: sense making (learning about the project context) and problem structuring (specifying problems, goals, requirements, constraints, etc.). An interdisciplinary literature review revealed substantial evidence that while sense making improves design performance, problem structuring reduces design performance. Future research should therefore investigate decoupling the sense making aspects of requirements engineering from the problem structuring aspects.