In principle, we conduct research projects with a particular focus on applied, empirical Software/Requirements Engineering to address topics of high practical relevance. Our research is of problem-driven and interdisciplinary nature and relies on continuous experimentation, development, and evaluation. Academia-industry collaborations are thus of high priority.
In the following, you find an overview of selected, ongoing research projects and collaborations as well as an overview of selected tools and services we developed as part of our research and teaching activities.
Research Projects
SERT - Software Engineering ReThought (BTH)

The goal of the project is to take on the next generation challenges facing companies developing software intensive systems and products. It is run in close collaboration with our industrial partners as we perform engineering research into topics critical for engineering and business success utilising Value-based engineering, Data-driven evidence based engineering, and Human-based development as major catalysts.
Details can be taken from here!
ZNAFlow (fortiss)
The project ZNAFlow, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, focuses on the development and evaluation of methods and AI-enabled software tools for a semi-automated control, scheduling, and dispatching of emergency response personnel in hospitals. This project fosters an interdisciplinary collaboration between experts from software/requirements engineering and applied machine learning in a co-production environment with experts from the health sector. The overall goal is to test the use of AI-enabled assistance systems to optimise the process in emergency response in the hospital.
Details can be taken from here!
RegComp (fortiss)
The project RegComp, a close collaboration with itestra GmbH, seeks the development and continuous evaluation of approaches for semi-automated requirement collection and conformance checks of requirements towards regulatory texts. We rely on natural language processing techniques to analyse and extract requirements from legal texts such as laws. Furthermore, we are developing a compliance check approach that support the verification of the conformance of requirements with regulatory texts. We aim to create a solution that can significantly reduce the time and effort required for compliance checks while ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the results.
Details can be taken from here!
Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering (internally funded)
Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering (NaPiRE) is a globally distributed, yearly replicated family of surveys on Requirements Engineering. This research collaboration is the first of its kind and aims at distilling the status quo in industrial practices and contemporary problems in RE to build a first holistic RE theory supporting a problem-driven research. NaPiRE has been founded by me and Stefan Wagner (University of Stuttgart) under the umbrella of the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN).
Details can be taken from here!
Tools and Services
RE Quick Check
The Requirements Engineering Quick Check is a web application that allows for a self-assessment of applied RE practices and experienced challenges. It constitutes a benchmark of practices and existing problems and their causes and effects extracted from the NaPiRE initiative and continuously enriched with further (anonymised) live data from ongoing self-assessments. The overall aim is provide a format that allows practitioners to easily (and quickly) position themselves based on a simple questionnaire and identify possible optimisation potential.
You can conduct the RE Quick Check here!
Causality in Requirements Engineering (CIRA)
Functional system behaviour is often described in natural language via causal relations (e.g. “A confirmation message shall be shown if the system has successfully processed the data”). Automatically extracting causality information from requirements artefacts allows for a multitude of possibilities, ranging from general reasoning about requirements and their dependencies to the generation of test cases. The CIRA initiative, led by Jannik Fischbach and Julian Frattini, aims at developing tool-supported approaches for the systematic, automatic extraction of information contained in causal relations and comprehends various tools and demos.
You can find further information here!