A retrospective analysis of SAC requirements

Abstract

Context: The activities related to Requirements engineering (RE) are some of the most important steps in software development, since the requirements describe what will be provided in a software system in order to fulfill the stakeholders' needs. In this context, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) has been a primary gathering forum for many RE activities. When studying a research area, it is important to identify the most active groups, topics, the research trends and so forth. Objective: In a previous paper, we investigated how the SAC RE-Track is evolving, by analyzing the papers published in its 8 previous editions. In this paper, we extended the analysis including the papers of the last edition (2016) and a brief resume of all papers published in the nine editions of SAC-RE track. Method: We adopted a research strategy that combines scoping study and systematic review good practices. Results: We investigated the most active countries, institutions and authors, the main topics discussed, the types of the contributions, the conferences and journals that have most referenced SAC RE-Track papers, the phases of the RE process supported by the contributions, the publications with the greatest impact, and the trends in RE. Conclusions: We found 86 papers over the 9 previous SAC RETrack editions, which were analyzed and discussed.