Do We Preach What We Practice? Investigating the Practical Relevance of Requirements Engineering Syllabi – The IREB Case. Fernández, D. M., Franch, X., Seyff, N., Felderer, M., Glinz, M., Kalinowski, M., Vogelsang, A., Wagner, S., Bühne, S., & Lauenroth, K. In CIbSE 2019 - XXII Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering, Havana, Cuba, April 22-26, pages 476-487, 2019. CIBSE RET 2019 Second Best Paper Award!
Do We Preach What We Practice? Investigating the Practical Relevance of Requirements Engineering Syllabi – The IREB Case [pdf]Author version  abstract   bibtex   2 downloads  
Nowadays, there exist a plethora of different educational syllabi for Requirements Engineering (RE), all aiming at incorporating practically relevant educational units (EUs). Many of these syllabi are based, in one way or the other, on the syllabi provided by the International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB), a non-profit organisation devoted to standardised certification programs for RE. IREB syllabi are developed by RE experts and are, thus, based on the assumption that they address topics of practical relevance. However, little is known about to what extent practitioners actually perceive those contents as useful. We have started a study to investigate the relevance of the EUs included in the IREB Foundation Level certification programme. In the first phase reported in this paper, we have surveyed practitioners mainly from DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) who participated in the IREB certification. Later phases will widen the scope both by including other countries and by not requiring IREB-certified participants. The results shall foster a critical reflection on the practical relevance of EUs built upon the de-facto standard syllabus of IREB.

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