Understanding Chinese Characteristics of Requirements Engineering

Rapid changes in the social and technical environment bring about many new challenges to system requirements engineering, amongst which out-sourcing or off-shoring of certain design tasks to countries with more human resources and broader markets becomes promising business leverage. This paper reports the results from a survey of requirements practices in China and points out their implications. The survey aims to understand the current state of RE practice in China, and investigate the impacts that Chinese culture has on requirements engineering activities. We collected data from 149 participants in 97 Chinese companies and 15 research institutes. We also analyzed the impact of Chinese culture on requirements engineering practices. We hope our results are useful for industrial practitioners and academic researchers wishing to improve current practices, and for foreign software companies wishing to better understand their Chinese customers.