Requirements reviews revisited: Residual challenges and open research questions

It is widely accepted that early reviews on requirements specifications (RS) are an effective and efficient quality assurance technique. So why are they still not applied all over the software industry? In this paper we pinpoint that this is due to five major challenges: 1) Software requirements are based on flawed `upstream' requirements and reviews on RS are thus in vain. 2) The impact of sociological issues related to reviews is underestimated. 3) Important quality aspects of RS escape reviews. 4) The goal of applying reviews is not made clear and different review approaches are mixed. 5) Incremental software development poses specific challenges to applying reviews on RS. In this paper we argue that in order to solve these five challenges research on reviews must take a more holistic approach, stretching to pre-project phases and incorporating various other disciplines in order to add more value for the software industry. The paper also offers preliminary solutions to the discussed challenges and sketches open research questions of high relevance for the software industry.