Authors:
António M. S. Ferreira
1
;
Alberto Rodrigues da Silva
1
and
Ana C. R. Paiva
2
Affiliations:
1
INESC-ID - Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
;
2
INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Agile Specification of Requirements, User Stories, Epics, Acceptance Criteria, Writing Guidelines.
Abstract:
Nowadays, more organizations adopt agile methodologies to guarantee short and frequent delivery times. A plethora of novel approaches and concepts regarding requirements engineering in this context are emerging. User stories are usually informally described as general explanations of software features, written from end-users perspective, while acceptance criteria are high-level conditions that enable their verification. This paper focuses on the art of writing user stories and acceptance criteria, but also on their relationships with other related concepts, such as quality requirements. In the pursuance of deriving guidelines and linguistic patterns to facilitate the writing of requirements specifications, a systematic literature review was conducted to provide a cohesive and comprehensive analysis of such concepts. Despite considerable research on the subject, no formalized model and systematic approach to assist this writing. We provide a coherent analysis of these concepts and rel
ated linguistic patterns supported by a running example of specifications built on top of ITLingo RSL, a publicly available tool to enforce the rigorous writing of specification artefacts. We consider that adopting and using the guidelines and patterns from the present discussion contribute to writing better and more consistent requirements.
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