NaPiRE is a community effort as it results from a collaboration between members of the empirical software engineering research community under the umbrella of the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN). It is, however, open for everybody to join in contributing to NaPiRE.

How can I contribute to NaPiRE?

NaPiRE is centrally organised following a coordinated process. Each survey is conducted independently by different (self-organised) teams on a two-year basis via our central infrastructure. After each round, the national teams commit themselves (after they potentially publish their results on their own) to disclose the raw (anonymised) data. At the end of each replication cycle, we synthesise the results obtained from the different countries and publish a joint report on the overall results and synergies between national-specific trends. All the reports will be also published on this website.

Everybody can therefore contribute to NaPiRE, either as a respondent or as an organiser running a national instance of NaPiRE. In case you are interested in contributing as a respondent, please contact the organiser of your respective country. In case you are interested in supporting as an organiser, please contact the general organisers. Prior to that, please read our manifesto.

How can I benefit from NaPiRE?

As researcher and practitioner as well, you benefit from NaPiRE as it shall:

1. provide a long-term investigation of current state of RE practices, problems, and potential mitigations.
2. support a problem-driven RE research where scientific contributions to RE can be put in tune with practically relevant problems.

NaPiRE allows researchers to steer and evaluate their own research, and it serves as a basis which can be complemented with further empirical inquiries (e.g. via experiments or case studies). It further allows practitioners to evaluate their own current RE situation against industrial trends.

By contributing as a respondent, you can add your personal views and experiences on RE to our knowledge base. By contributing as an organiser, you can actively steer the development of NaPiRE covering those facets that are in your particular research field.

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Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering (NaPiRE) constitutes a globally distributed family of surveys on Requirements Engineering (RE) practices and problems, initiated by Daniel Méndez and Stefan Wagner in 2012. NaPiRE constitutes an academic (non-profit and open) initiative which aims at establishing holistic theory on industrial practices and problems in RE – the first of its kind. Each survey replication strengthens the robustness of our theory and extends it with a particular focus on:

• the status quo in company practices and industrial experiences,
• problems and how those problems manifest themselves in the process, and
• what potential success factors for RE are.

To establish a reliable theory in RE, which serves the community to steer problem-driven research, we jointly conduct our surveys in a distributed and bi-yearly replicated manner while committing ourselves to the core principles and values described below.

Values and Principles

All NaPiRE researchers commit themselves to certain values and principles. These are:

Openness: Openness begins by cordially inviting researchers and practitioners of any software engineering related community to contribute to NaPiRE and ends by disclosing our (anonymised) raw data and reports without any restrictions or commercial interest to the public. NaPiRE therefore commits itself to full open science practices; it is an initiative run by the community for the community.

Transparency: All results obtained from the distributed surveys are open to the public (after appropriate curation), including the (anonymised) raw data, codebooks, and (statistical) analysis scripts and code sheets from the qualitative coding. This shall allow other researchers for an independent data analysis, interpretation, and replication.

Anonymity: The participation in NaPiRE as an industrial respondent is possible by invitation. However, no personal data is collected and every data set obtained from the survey will be carefully analysed for information that might be traced back to a specific company to ensure that no personal data will be disclosed to public. That is, we guarantee that no answer set can be related to survey participants.

Accuracy and Validity: With accuracy and validity, we refer in particular to the data collection and to the data analysis procedures. Each question in the survey is carefully defined according a jointly elaborated theory to specifically corroborate or refute existing expectations. The data analysis is furthermore performed in joint collaboration by different empirical software researchers to maximise the validity of the results.

NaPiRE Project Organisation

NaPiRE is organised into NaPiRE survey runs (replications) which encompass the

1. Preparation and Data Collection including adjustment of the instrument based on previous runs to steer theory building and the actual data collection, and the
2. Data Analysis and Disclosure including the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data obtained, the interpretation of the data and the publication, and the data disclosure,

each with a duration of approximately one year. After each NaPiRE survey run, the steering committee curates, anonymises, licenses, and discloses the data sets to the public for further non-commercial use by the research community. We are convinced that open data is key to achieve our goal of supporting problem-driven research. Finally, to jointly work along the runs, the community has annually organised workshops.

Every NaPiRE survey run is concluded with at least one joint publication. This joint publication is driven by core writing teams, formed in joint agreement by the community, and it shall serve the purpose of community building and results dissemination. Authorship is defined by contribution to the overall initiative and the order is agreed on in advance within the whole NaPiRE team. After the joint publication, the steering committee curates the data and discloses it to the public.

Project Organisation

The NaPiRE project architecture is structured into a steering committee and several national teams representing different countries. The steering committee centrally organises the overall team organisation, the infrastructure, and the overall survey runs. The steering committee consists of:

• Daniel Méndez (primary contact)
• Stefan Wagner
• Michael Felderer
• Marcos Kalinowski

National teams are self-organised teams who run the NaPiRE replications in their respective countries of affiliation. That is, they invite industry representatives to participate in the survey runs along the data collection phase, support in the overall data analysis, and prepare the country-specific results for distribution to the participants. Further, when necessary, they support in the translations of instruments and the data.

Joining NaPiRE as a national team member is done upon request and provided:

• the candidate forms active part of the research community,
• the steering committee agrees by majority vote, and
• the respective national team agrees by majority vote.

Active contributions to the research community (empirical software engineering and / or requirements engineering) are key to ensure the representativeness of the team for the topics addressed in NaPiRE. Membership proposals can be informally directed to the primary contact person in the steering committee and should include a brief description of the candidate’s background, affiliation and contact information, the planned contribution to NaPiRE, and the expectations from the collaboration. Continuous membership in NaPiRE is further dependent on the commitment of the researchers to the project (see below). After each NaPiRE survey run, the steering committee re-evaluates the activities within the team and decides upon ongoing memberships.

Infrastructure

NaPiRE has a centrally organised infrastructure including a website, a central web-based survey tool where survey replications are implemented, and an internal repository where all the tools and analysis scripts as well as all the (uncurated, not yet anonymised) data is stored for the analysis. The internal repository is closed to the community only and contents can only be shared with third parties after the explicit agreement by the steering committee. The central infrastructure is organised and financed by the steering committee.

Commitments by Team Members

Each member of the NaPiRE project commits herself or himself to the following:

• To adhere to the overall principles and values of NaPiRE and to show a high standard of scientific working and integrity in context of the data handling in any NaPiRE-related publication and/or presentation.
• To actively contribute to the overall initiative. This includes active contribution to the preparations and data collections, and to the data analyses and publications.

The data obtained via the NaPiRE survey runs is licensed under creative commons agreement and disclosed to the public by the steering committee after the joint community publication and after curating and anonymising the data.

Prior to the data disclosure of a specific NaPiRE survey run:

• Every national team member can independently analyse and report on the data from the respective country only provided the agreement of the other national team members and the acknowledgement of the steering committee.
• Every national team member actively contributes to the data collection and analysis, e.g. along the annual workshops.

Every NaPiRE member finally commits herself or himself to the data protection of the NaPiRE data before it is disclosed by the steering committee, in particular before it is curated and anonymised so that the principles and values of NaPiRE can be ensured.

Steering Committee

• Daniel Méndez Fernández, Technical University of Munich
• Stefan Wagner, University of Stuttgart
• Michael Felderer, University of Innsbruck
• Marcos Kalinowski, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

Team Members / Country Representatives

NaPiRE Argentina

• Gabriela Robiolo, Universidad Austral

NaPiRE Australia

• Didar Zowghi, University of Technology Sydney

NaPiRE Austria

• Michael Felderer, University of Innsbruck
• Dietmar Winkler, Technical University of Vienna, SBA Research gGmbH
• Stefan Biffl, Technical University of Vienna

NaPiRE Brazil

• Marcos Kalinowski, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
• Alessandro Garcia, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
• Rodrigo Spinola, UNIFACS/Fraunhofer Project Center at UFBA
• Rafael Prikladnicki, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS)
• Tayana Conte, Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM)

NaPiRE Canada

• Günther Ruhe, University of Calgary
• Maleknaz Nayebi, University of Calgary

NaPiRE China

• Qing Wang, Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences

NaPiRE Cuba

• Marelis Perez Garcia, Universidad de las Ciencias Informaticas

NaPiRE Ecuador

• Efrain R. Fonseca C., Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE
• Cecilia Hinojosa, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE

NaPiRE Estonia

• Dietmar Pfahl, University of Tartu

NaPiRE Finland

• Markku Oivo, University of Oulu
• Tomi Männistö, University of Helsinki
• Casper Lassenius, Aalto University

NaPiRE Germany

• Daniel Méndez Fernández, Technical University of Munich
• Stefan Wagner, University of Stuttgart
• Kristian Beckers, Siemens
• Andreas Vogelsang, Technical University of Berlin
• Daniel Graziotin, University of Stuttgart
• Yvonne Sedelmaier, Coburg University of applied sciences and the arts
• Jürgen Mottok, OTH Regensburg

NaPiRE India

• Sulabh Tyagi, University of Delhi

NaPiRE Italy

• Marco Torchiano, Politecnico di Torino

NaPiRE Japan

• Hiroyuki Nakagawa, Osaka University

NaPiRE Luxembourg

• Mehrdad Sabetzadeh, University of Luxembourg

NaPiRE Netherlands

• Maya Daneva, University of Twente
• Roel Wieringa, University of Twente
• Sjaak Brinkkemper, Utrecht University

NaPiRE New Zealand

• Matthias Galster, University of Canterbury
• Kelly Blincoe, University of Auckland
• Craig Anslow, Victoria University of Wellington

NaPiRE Norway

• Pekka Abrahamsson, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
• Sagar Sen, Simula Research Laboratory
• Thor Myklebust, SINTEF

NaPiRE Portugal

• Catarina Gralha, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
• Miguel Goulão, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
• João Araújo, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
• Ana Moreira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

NaPiRE Spain

• Oscar Pastor, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia
• Xavier Franch, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
• Albert Tort Pugibet, Sogeti Spain
• Jose Luis de la Vara, Carlos III University of Madrid

NaPiRE Sweden

• Marie-Therese Christiansson, Karlstads Universitet
• André Schekelmann, Hochschule Niederrhein
• Krzysztof Wnuk, Blekinge Institute of Technolog

NaPiRE Switzerland

• Martin Glinz, University of Zurich

NaPiRE United Kingdom

• Desmond Greer, Queen’s University Belfast

NaPiRE Uruguay

• Martin Solari, Unviesidad ORT Uruguay
• Santiago Matalonga, Unviesidad ORT Uruguay

NaPiRE USA

• Birgit Penzenstadler, California State University, Long Beach
• Jeffrey Carver, University of Alabama

Further Contributors

• Barry Boehm, University of Southern California
• Manfred Broy, Technische Universität München
• Giovanni Cantone, University of Rome
• Marcela Genero, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
• Jürgen Münch, University of Helsinki
• Dave Zubrow, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon