Requirements engineering challenges in market-driven software development – An interview study with practitioners

Requirements engineering for market-driven software development entails special challenges. This paper presents results from an empirical study that investigates these challenges, taking a qualitative approach using interviews with fourteen employees at eight software companies and a focus group meeting with practitioners. The objective of the study is to increase the understanding of the area of market-driven requirements engineering and provide suggestions for future research by describing encountered challenges. A number of challenging issues were found, including bridging communication gaps between marketing and development, selecting the right level of process support, basing the release plan on uncertain estimates, and managing the constant flow of requirements.