Deriving and Validating Requirements Engineering Principles for Large-Scale Agile Development: An Industrial Longitudinal Study

2026-02-11

AI Summary

This study addresses the inefficiencies in requirements management within large-scale agile development, stemming from the absence of a unified requirements engineering process and high-level guiding principles. Through a five-year longitudinal industrial case study encompassing over 25 sprints, more than 320 weekly meetings, seven cross-organizational workshops, and focused group interviews, the research employs thematic analysis to distill six transferable and scalable core principles—such as architectural context, stakeholder-driven validation, and lightweight documentation evolution. Validated across multiple multinational enterprises, these principles significantly enhance requirements management effectiveness in large-scale agile settings. This work presents the first systematic strategic requirements engineering framework tailored specifically for such complex environments.

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Abstract

In large scale agile systems development, the lack of a unified requirements engineering (RE) process is a major challenge, exacerbated by the absence of high level guiding principles for effective requirements management. To address this challenge, we conducted a five year longitudinal case study with Grundfos AB, in collaboration with the Software Centre in Sweden. RE principles were first derived through qualitative data collection spanning more than 25 sprints, approximately 320 weekly synchronisation meetings, and seven cross-company, company-specific workshops between 2019 and 2024. These activities engaged practitioners from diverse roles, representing several hundred developers across domains. In late 2024, five in depth focus groups with senior leaders at Grundfos provided retrospective validation of the principles and assessed their strategic impact. We aim to (1) empirically examine RE principles in large scale agile system development, (2) explore their benefits in practice within the case company, and (3) identify a set of transferable RE principles for large scale contexts. Using thematic analysis, six key RE principles architectural context, stakeholder-driven validation and alignment, requirements practices in large-scale agile organisations. evolution with lightweight documentation, delegated requirements management, organisational roles and responsibilities, and a shared understanding of requirements are derived. The study was further validated through crosscompany expert evaluation with three additional multinational organisations (Bosch, Ericsson, and Volvo Cars), which are directly responsible for largescale requirements management. Together, these efforts provide a scalable and adaptable foundation for improving requirements practices in largescale agile organisations.

Problem

• requirements engineering
• large-scale agile
• guiding principles
• requirements management
• agile development

Innovation

• large-scale agile
• requirements engineering principles
• longitudinal case study
• thematic analysis
• empirical validation