A quantitative study to identify critical requirement engineering challenges in the context of small and medium software enterprise

Requirement engineering field has been intensively studied in last decade. Even though requirement still one of the most critical process in software development. Recent studies shows that 56 of system defects are coming from requirement. Additionally, by one estimate requirement errors cost 10 times more than coding errors. Thus, there is a need to identify those critical requirement engineering challenges. To address this issues, critical challenges have been investigated in the last two decades between the year 1995 and 2016. Where systematic literature review (SLR) has been used to explore previous studies findings and results. Additionally, identified critical challenges have been further investigated using quantitative study through software small and medium enterprises (SME). Where a total of 250 surveys have been collected, after eliminating incomplete surveys 217 completed surveys used for data analysis. After performing all process 12 challenges has been specified as critical challenges in the context of software SME. Where identified critical challenges can benefit software enterprises particularly new enterprises to pay further attention to specified critical challenges. © 2016 IEEE.