Comparative Analysis of Requirement Change Management Challenges Between in-House and Global Software Development: Findings of Literature and Industry Survey

Sajid Anwer,Lian Wen,Sajjad Mahmood,Zhe Wang

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2936664

Sajid Anwer, Lian Wen + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2936664

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Abstract

Requirement changes are inevitable, and Requirement Change Management (RCM) is a complex process in software development. In-house software development and Global Software Development (GSD) are two widely used development approaches and there is a need to explore the RCM commonalities and differences in the two development approaches. The primary objective of this study is to identify the challenges that influence RCM in both approaches. First, we have implemented Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and identified 9 challenges that impact the general RCM process and 3 more challenges related to RCM with GSD. Second, we have conducted a questionnaire survey based on SLR results and collected feedback from 69 industry practitioners. The survey result indicates that there are four out of nine challenges, namely impact analysis, requirement traceability, requirement dependency, and system instability having the same impact in both in-house and GSD approaches. On the other hand, cost/time estimation, artifacts documents management, user involvement, requirement consistency, and requirement prioritization need more attention while implemented in GSD paradigm. Furthermore, regarding two important project management structures in GSD, centralized project structure and distributed project structure, the survey results reveal that all challenges have same impact except user involvement and change control board management, which are more important in centralized project structure. Lastly, the result from t-test indicates that both data sets retrieved from SLR and survey are close to each other. This study distinguishes RCM challenges in in-house and GSD approaches and in the context of two prominent project management structures followed in GSD projects. It would assist researchers by providing potential research directions and industry professionals to understand and implement RCM in different context more efficiently.

Highlights

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a critical phase in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and requirements development and requirements management are the two key activities performed in this phase
This section discusses the findings of Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and survey in the context of the research questions defined in the previous section
The different aspects of Requirement Change Management (RCM) challenges have been explored in existing research, the need to understand this process from different development approaches such as in-house software development and Global Software Development (GSD), has motivated us to conduct this study

Summary

Introduction

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a critical phase in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and requirements development and requirements management are the two key activities performed in this phase. Can be defined as ‘‘the tendency of requirements to change over time in response to evolving needs of customers, stakeholders, organizations and work environment’’ [3]. Software development is a dynamic process and it is difficult to specify all the system requirements in the start as the requirements are subject to change. Factors such as customer needs, change in business goals, and government regulations contribute significantly to requirements changes. GLOBAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE Software development environment is continuously changing. Many organizations that have tried GSD failed because of misunderstanding of requirements, poor global relationships among clients and vendors, high costs and overall poor services [22]

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