Success Factors for Requirement Patterns Approaches : Exploring Requirements Analysts' Opinions and Whishes

Research in requirement patterns has led to different approaches, fostering elicitation efficiency and requirements quality by reusing known solutions. However, such pattern-based approaches are not established within many companies, even though requirements are often reused in practice. In this paper, we present the results of five semi-structured interviews with experienced requirements analysts, in order to explore their opinions about requirement patterns, what they expect from a requirement patterns approach and what the success factors are. Our results show that the advantages of requirement patterns are well known and analysts would like to adopt them, but the required organizational changes have to be supported and decided upon by representatives from management. Depending on the lifecycle of the company, requirement analysts see different strategies for gaining their manager's support concerning the adoption of pattern-based approaches. One key aspect in their eyes is that requirement pattern approaches should focus on application in and integration into existing processes of the organization. With such approaches, requirements analysts would have the chance to benefit from the advantages pattern-based approaches provide within the scope of their organizational processes. We present new areas for requirement patterns research and provide arguments to help practitioners persuade their companies to adopt a pattern-based requirement engineering approach.