The slow wheels of requirements engineering research: responding to the challenge of societal change

Despite the significant Requirements Engineering (RE) research efforts over the past decade the research--industry gap still remains persistent.<br />Recent attempts by the RE research community to address this issue include cumulative knowledge studies to describe the current state of RE research and the establishment of a new conference dedicated to the comparative evaluation of RE. <br />This paper reports the state of RE research from 2001 to 2005. A taxonomy of RE literature is presented and a conceptual framework for<br />understanding the current state of RE is also described. The ensuing analysis shows that during the period 2001-2005 there was only an incremental development of RE research without any radical theoretical contributions to its body of knowledge. The paper also poses a challenge for the RE research community to respond to the dramatic changes in the<br />social and business world.<br />