Requirements engineering in feature oriented software product lines: An initial analytical study

Requirements engineering is recognized as a critical stage in software development lifecycle. Given the nature of Software Product Lines (SPL), the importance of requirements engineering is more pronounced as SPLs pose more complex challenges than development of a 'single' product. Several methods have been proposed in the literature, which encompass activities for capturing requirements, their variability and commonality. To investigate the maturity and effectiveness of the current requirements engineering approaches in software product lines, we develop an evaluation framework containing a set of evaluation criteria and assess feature oriented requirements engineering methods based on the proposed criteria. As a result of this initial study, we find out the majority of approaches lacks proper techniques for supporting the validation of family requirements models as well as dealing with delta requirements. Additionally, capturing stakeholders' preferences and applying them during the course of software feature configuration have not been taken into account and addressed in the proposed approaches.