Using Wikis to manage use cases: Experience and outlook. Full Conference Paper

Sound requirements engineering is one of the key practices for a successful software project. However, the risk exists that requirements documents degenerate into a write-only documentation that does not reflect the experiences with the system under development gained throughout a project. Furthermore, "classical", self-contained templates for requirements documentation do not reflect the interrelated nature of requirements. For example, a user description is referenced in various places in a requirements document. In this paper, we present how freely available Wikis support requirements engineering based on a textual use case approach, in line with the following considerations: First, we believe that the agile nature of Wikis support the creation and change management of requirements. Second, as a hypertext system, they address the intertwined nature of requirements. Third, Wikis provide a low-effort, easy-to-test approach to requirements engineering, since most of them are open source and server-based.