Proposed ethical framework for software requirements engineering

Abstract

Requirements engineering is a fundamental process in software development phases. At the same time, it is a difficult phase and exposed many ethical violations. The main purpose is proposing an ethical framework for software requirements engineering that addresses the identified concerns. These concerns include problems associated with a knowledge gap, requirements identification, quality-related concerns, unwillingness to give requirements, and practicing forbidden activities. These concerns are grouped into a category as the proposed framework components. Each of the categories encompasses more than one problem domain. The proposed framework suggests resolving mechanisms as collections of clauses for each of those concerns. An expert evaluation technique is used to validate the proposed framework. The experts are purposefully selected from software industries and institutions. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were used as data-gathering tools for the validation of the proposed framework. The validity (face validity, content validity, and construct validity) and the reliability of the proposed framework were checked. The evaluation results show that the proposed framework has an acceptable range of validity and reliability. The proposed framework can be used as a guideline for software engineers to minimise the occurrence of those identified concerns during the requirements engineering process.