Organization Type and Size Based Identification of Requirements Change Management Challenges in Global Software Development

Muhammad Azeem Akbar,Sajjad Mahmood,Abdu Gumaei,Abeer Abdul-Aziz Alsanad,Ahmed Alsanad,Muhammad Shafiq

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2995238

Abstract

Global Software Development (GSD) is adopted by organizations to develop quality software at relatively low cost. Requirement Change Management (RCM) plays a key role in overall success of a GSD project. The objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process by adopting systematic literature review (SLR) and validate them by employing questionnaire survey approach in real world practices. A total of 25 challenges were identified through SLR and empirical study. We have further classified the identified challenges into client and vendor organizations with an aim to understand RCM challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types of the organization size (small, medium, large), that highlights the significance of each challenge for specific organizational size. The results indicate that there is a moderate correlation between the ranking of these challenges in the literature and the survey results. The finding of this study has the potential to help the GSD organizations in addressing the problems related with RCM in GSD projects.

Highlights

Change is a challenging aspect of requirements engineering process [1]
1) CHALLENGES IDENTIFIED USING AN systematic literature review (SLR) In the SLR approach, a total of 25 challenges were identified from the 69 selected primary studies
We have categorized the investigated challenges based on their significance to client and vendor Global software development (GSD) firms

Summary

Introduction

Change is a challenging aspect of requirements engineering process [1]. Software professionals face problems in identifying an extensive set of system requirements that reflect contemporary situations and adjust to changing needs [1]. One of the most important issues that software businesses have to address is the dynamic change in process requirements [2]. Several factors such as customer needs, market dynamics, global competitors, and government regulations contribute to the change in system requirements. Requirements Change Management (RCM) in software development is highly important and essential to the success of a software project [3]. We adopt Nurmuliani’s [4] definition as follows: ‘‘the tendency of

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