Investigating user feedback from a crowd in requirements management in software ecosystems

Requirements management is a process that aims to ensure that the needs of stakeholders are met through delivering adequate and quality software products. However, requirements management becomes challenging in open and dynamic environments with multiple stakeholders who belong to different organizations and collaborate over a common technological platform as in software ecosystems (SECO). In SECO, distinct crowds of users provide requirements, change requests, and bug reports through feedback across multiple communication channels. However, user feedback from a crowd is often not considered in requirements management activities in SECO because of its complexity. Our study aims to investigate whether and how user feedback from a crowd is considered in requirements management in SECO. To achieve this goal, we conducted a field study based on interviews with 20 professionals involved in activities in this context. We identified ten mechanisms used to gather user feedback from a crowd in requirements management in SECO and six approaches to analyze this feedback. User feedback from a crowd influences requirements management in SECO, making it more open and collaborative. Moreover, the continuous flow of user feedback makes crowd-based requirements engineering (CrowdRE) possible in SECO.