A survey of existing requirements engineering technologies and their coverage

Requirements engineering is a process in which a most diverse set of product demands from a most diverse set of stakeholders has to be considered. Thus, requirements engineering is generally thought of as the most critical and complex process within the development of embedded systems. Over the years, a lot of requirements engineering research has been carried out and reported, but still it seems clear that the industry is struggling with requirements engineering. Why is that, and what should be done to support the industry in tackling its problems? Develop a new method, tailor the existing ones, or better inform the industry of what is available that could help them in their problems? To find some answers, we carried out an inventory of the available requirements engineering technologies, while also looking into their support for requirements engineering. This paper describes the survey and reports our findings indicating that what is most urgently needed is information and evidence of the applicability of the available technologies in different situations, though further development of the technologies is also required.