Context: Software development is human-centric and vulnerable to human error. Human errors are errors in the human thought process. To ensure software quality, practitioners must understand how to manage these human errors. Organizations often change the requirements engineering process to prevent human errors from occurring or to mitigate the harm caused when those errors do occur. While there are studies on human error management in other disciplines, research on the prevention and mitigation of human errors in software engineering, and requirements engineering specifically, are limited. The software engineering studies do not provide strong results about the types of changes that are most effective in requirements engineering. Objective: The goal of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of human error prevention and mitigation strategies based on data from requirements engineering professionals. Method: We performed a qualitative analysis of two practitioner surveys on requirements engineering practices to identify and classify strategies for the prevention and mitigation of human errors. Results: We organized the human error management strategies into a taxonomy based on whether they primarily affect People, Processes, or the Environment. Inside each high-level category, we further organized the strategies into low-level classes. More than 50% of the reported strategies require a change in Process, 23% require a change in Environment, 21% require a change in People, with the remaining 5% too ambiguous to classify. In addition, more than 50\% of the strategies focus on Management activities. Conclusions: The Human Error Management Taxonomy provides a systematic classification and organization of strategies for prevention and mitigation of human errors in requirements engineering. This systematic organization provides a foundation upon which research can build.
翻译:语境:软件开发以人为中心,易受人为错误影响。人为错误是指人类思维过程中的错误。为确保软件质量,从业者必须理解如何管理这些人为错误。组织常调整需求工程流程以预防人为错误发生,或减轻错误发生时的危害。尽管其他学科有人为错误管理的研究,但软件工程,尤其是需求工程中关于人为错误预防与缓解的研究较为有限。现有软件工程研究未能提供关于需求工程中最有效变革类型的强有力结论。目标:本文旨在基于需求工程从业者的数据,构建人为错误预防与缓解策略的分类体系。方法:我们对两项关于需求工程实践的从业者调查进行定性分析,以识别和分类人为错误预防与缓解策略。结果:我们将人为错误管理策略按照主要影响对象(人员、流程或环境)组织成分类体系。在每个高层类别下,进一步将策略细分为低层类别。超过50%的报告策略涉及流程改变,23%涉及环境改变,21%涉及人员改变,剩余5%因模糊性无法分类。此外,超过50%的策略聚焦于管理活动。结论:人为错误管理分类法为需求工程中人为错误的预防与缓解策略提供了系统化的分类与组织。这一系统性框架为后续研究奠定了基础。