Innovations Syst Softw Eng (2014) 10:235–241 DOI 10.1007/s11334-014-0232-4 ORIGINAL PAPER State of practice in requirements engineering: contemporary data Mohamad Kassab · Colin Neill · Phillip Laplante Received: 16 February 2014 / Accepted: 4 April 2014 / Published online: 16 April 2014 © Springer-Verlag London 2014 Abstract Little contemporary data exists that documents software requirements elicitation, requirements specifica- tion, document development, and specification validation practices. An exploratory survey of more than 3,000 soft- ware professionals was conducted and nearly 250 responses were obtained. Survey data obtained includes characteristics of projects, practices, organizations, and practitioners related to requirements engineering. Selected results are presented along with interpretations of this data. Keywords Requirements engineering · Common prac- tices · Requirements specification · Software development industry · Software professionals · Requirements elicitation 1 Introduction In 2003 the authors [1] presented results of a comprehensive survey showing requirements engineering practices across a broad range of industries and projects types. The results were surprising in that they indicated, among other things, that the Waterfall model was still widely used and that vari- ous techniques associated with Agile development were not widely employed. Results from a similar survey in 2008 [2] indicated that the findings from 2003 had remained largely unchanged. The 2003 survey results were highly cited (181 M. Kassab (B ) · C. Neill · P. Laplante Engineering Division, The Pennsylvania State University, 30 E Swedesford Rd, Malvern, PA 19355, USA e-mail: muk36@psu.edu C. Neill e-mail: cjn6@psu.edu P. Laplante e-mail: plaplante@psu.edu times via Google Scholar), and seemed to provide a template for more focused requirements surveys. For example Khu- rum et al. [3] conducted a brief survey to uncover challenges in organizations to effective requirements engineering, Cher- nak [4] surveyed a small group of companies to determine the prevalence of requirements reuse and Verner et al. [5] sought to uncover specific issues with respect to requirements man- agement. But since 2003 and again in 2008 the results of no other comprehensive surveys of requirements engineering practices were published. To remedy this deficiency, and provide useful data to other researchers, we updated and reprised the 2003 and 2008 surveys. The present survey includes responses from a broader geographic base including international participants. Selected data from this most recent survey is exhibited herein along with some interpretations of the meaning of this data. 2 Survey design and conduct We created a Web-based survey using the Web-based Ques- tionPro survey tool (http://www.QuestionPro.com). The sur- vey consisted of 32 questions (summarized in Table 1). Par- ticipants were drawn from multiple sources: 1. A database of former students in the Masters of Soft- ware Engineering degree program at the Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies (PSGV). PSGV caters primarily to working professionals. An email invitation (and subsequent reminder) was sent to these individuals. 2. Subscribers to the IEEE Reliability Society newsletter, which has a circulation of >3,000 professional mem- bers. An email invitation and reminder was sent to the associated listserver. 123