The main role of requirements engineering (RE) is to guide development projects towards implementing products that will appeal to customers. To effectively achieve this RE needs to be coordinated with and clearly communicated to the later software development activities. [Question/Problem] Communication gaps between RE and other development activities reduce coordination and alignment, and can lead to project delays and failure to meet customer needs. [Principle ideas/results] The main hypothesis is that coordination is enhanced by proximity to RE roles and artefacts, and that distances to later activities increase the effort needed to align requirements with other development work. Thirteen RE-related distances have been identified through a systematic map of existing research. [Contribution] Reported distances are mapped according to research type, RE activity and later software development activities. The results provide an overview of RE distances and can be used a basis for defining a theoretical framework. an efficient way, allows early exploration of the problem space, and enables engineers to identify requirements and match them to available components and products [25] . Similarly, Fricker et al. found that aligning requirements and architecture through a negotiation process between product management and architecture led to identifying missed requirements, and to a shared requirements understanding that mitigated problems related to missed requirements and requirements dependencies [17] . Coordination and alignment of RE and testing. We have previously reported on the situation of alignment between RE and testing in industry [5] . Two of the main challenges was found to be RE quality and the softer aspects of development, i.e. communication and collaboration [5] . Furthermore, a number of industrial practices for supporting alignment have been reported both by Bjarnason et al and by Uusitalo et al. These practices include traceability between requirements and test cases, and increased communication between roles [5, 31], e.g. by involving testers early in the project and in requirement reviews, and by establishing communication between testers and requirement owners [31] . Similarly, Marczak et al. found that in requirementsdriven collaboration, close communication between requirements and testing depends on key roles which when absent cause disruptions within the development team [24] .
In REF , gaps between requirements engineering and later software development are further investigated in a systematic mapping study and 13 distances between RE and development are presented.
Distances between requirements engineering and later software development activities: a systematic map
REFSQ
Computer Science