A new paradigm for applied requirements engineering research

Abstract

This position paper reflects on recent work that sought to make positive changes to the IEEE Requirements Engineering conference (RE), and on twenty years of requirements engineering (REng) research. We question the values that seem to underpin RE, and offer what we believe are more appropriate values. We argue that these new values would result in better alignment between research and the needs of industry. Further, the new values would encourage more rewarding work for researchers, and would lead to a better RE conference. We summarise the value shift in a draft manifesto for applied research in REng. To illustrate the potential for concrete changes, we suggest one possible wiki-based model for REng research that could deliver these new values.