Requirements Change Management Research Articles

Detection of Inconsistencies in SysML/OCL Models Using OWL Reasoning

Requirement change management is a challenging issue in software development. One of the main objectives of the Intent-Defined Adaptive Software program is to verify the satisfaction of requirement changes during software development. In this paper, we develop an ontology-based method to detect inconsistencies in Systems Modeling Language (SysML) models with Object Constraint Language (OCL) constraints as a first step of requirement change management. Specifically, we map the SysML/OCL models to Web Ontology Language (OWL), so that the consistency of the corresponding ontology can be checked by OWL reasoners automatically. We propose a set of mapping rules to interpret the components of SysML state machine diagrams, along with OCL constraints, to OWL. Toward this objective, we demonstrate three consistency reasoning tasks over a state machine diagram using OWL reasoners. In each case, the result of reasoning is accompanied by an explanation of the logic behind the decision.

TINJAUAN SISTEMATIS TERHADAP PERSYARATAN MANAJEMEN PERUBAHAN DALAM PROYEK PENGEMBANGAN PERANGKAT LUNAK

Changes in software development are unavoidable and can occur due to changing needs of users, stakeholders, and the presence of new technologies. Analysis of the impact of changes greatly affects the cost and time of project work that can affect the success of the project. With the analysis, can help reduce the impact caused. Therefore, proper change management in software development projects is required. In this paper we present a review of the need for change management in software development. The writing of this paper is done to answer the problems that arise based on the discussion of the journals studied. The problems include: 1. what are the causes of change management, 2. What is the impact of change? 3. What methods can be used to cope with change? 4. What tools can be used to cope with change? The method used in writing this review is to draw conclusions based on the discussion obtained from the grouping of journals related to change management and the need for change management sourced from ScienceDirect and IEEE. The results obtained from this review are to answer four questions that arise and draw conclusions about the methods and tools that are often used in large case studies in change management. The method that is often used to support the management of requirements change is Requirements Change Management (RCM). RCM consists of 3 stages (1) Understanding changes (2) Analysis of changes and (3) Finalizing changes to this method can be assisted with web tools. The web is often used to support change management needs because it can be used to manage quantitative and qualitative data.
 Keywords: Change Management; Software Development, Requirement Change Management (RCM)

SRCMIMM: the software requirements change management and implementation maturity model in the domain of global software development industry

The software industry has widely adopted global software development (GSD) to gain economic benefits. Organizations that engage in GSD face various challenges, the majority being associated with requirements change management (RCM). The key motive of this study is to develop a requirement change management and implementation maturity model (SRCMIMM) for the GSD industry that could help the practitioners to assess and manage their RCM activities. A systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approach are used to identify and validate the critical success factors (CSFs), critical challenges (CCHs), and the related best practices of the RCM process. The investigated CSFs and CCHs are classified into five maturity levels based on the concepts of the existing maturity models in other domains, practitioners’ feedback, and academic research. Every maturity level comprises different CSFs and CCHs that can help assess and manage a firm's RCM capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, four case studies are conducted in different GSD firms. The SRCMIMM has been developed to assist GSD organizations in improving their RCM process in efficiency and effectiveness.

Elicitation, Computational Representation, and Analysis of Mission and System Requirements

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Strategies for evaluating the impact of mission requirements on the design of mission-specific vehicles are needed to enable project managers to assess potential benefits and associated costs of changes in requirements. Top-level requirements that cause significant cascaded difficulties on lower-level requirements should be identified and presented to decision-makers. This paper aims to introduce formal methods and computational tools to enable the analysis and allocation of mission requirements. Initial results for three interrelated research problems are discussed: (1) understanding the current practices of interrelationships between requirements. the requirements elicitation and change management processes using a case study approach; (2) requirement elicitation using gamification strategies; and (3) computational representation of the technical requirements and identification The case study approach involves interviewing the stakeholders that participate in the requirements generation process to collect data on the current practices of requirements elicitation. Systematic requirements generation strategies, change management processes, limitations, and areas for improvement are the outcomes of this study. A gamification strategy is also deployed to study requirements elicitation and change management processes by incentivizing the users based on their performance on a set of metrics. Two surveys, one with and the other without gamification, are designed to study the impact of gamification methods on requirements elicitation. Lastly, text analytics tools are developed to extract requirements from textual descriptions and identify their inter-relationships to be stored in the requirement graph representation.</div></div>

Quality Requirement Change Management’s Challenges: An Exploratory Study Using SLR

Requirement change management plays an important role in the business world where management in the business scenario is a hard-hitting assignment because of continuously changing customer choices in respect of requirements. Giving no attention to requirement change management challenges result in consumers’ discontent. Main cause of business products is that there is no planning regarding requirement change management. Furthermore, it also affects market value. Dealing in requirement change management, it’s far important to cope with those challenges to undertake the requirement of the business consumers. This article focuses on documentation and control of quality requirement challenges by using an approach of systematic literature review. The main goal of this article is to classify critical challenges being faced by vendor companies in global software development. A total of fourteen challenges have been documented which have a severe effect on the management of quality requirements. Challenges documented by an author like ‘Incomplete requirements’, ‘Lack of Communication & Coordination, etc. are the key challenges harming managing quality requirement changes. Among these fourteen challenges, nine challenges are marked as critical challenges whose ratios are above 25%. The identified challenges were analyzed decade wise where we categorized them into three decades i.e. first decade (1992-2002), the second decade (2003-2012), and the third decade (2013-2021).

Role of Critical Success Factors in Offshore Quality Requirement Change Management Using SLR

In software engineering field, requirement change management is a challenging job. Ignoring incoming changes results in customer displeasure. It may also result in late product transportation. Managing requirement changes in poor way is the main cause of product failure. It has more diverse effect in global software outsourcing. In software quality requirement change management, it is necessary to address success factors in order to accomplish the requirements of the customers. In this paper, systematic literature review approach is used for documentation and scrutinization of success factors. Total sixteen success factors were recognized having great impact on quality software requirement change management. Our identified success factors like `Proper Requirement Change Management', `Rapid Delivery', `Quality Software Product, Access to Market', `Project Management', `Skills and Methodologies', `Low Cost/Effort Estimation', `Clear Plan and Road Map', `Agile Processes', `Low Labor Cost', `User Satisfaction', `Communication/Close Coordination', `Proper Scheduling and Time Constraints', `Frequent Technological Changes', `Robust Model', `Geographical juncture/Cultural differences' are the crucial factors that affect software quality requirement change. Company size and different database have been used for the analysis of success factors. The databases/search engine used are Google scholar, Science Direct, IEEE Explore and Springer for the exploration of success factors. Companies are analyzed on the basis of their size such as small, medium and large.

A Study on Mitigating the Communication and Coordination Challenges During Requirements Change Management in Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) is widely used by software development organizations to ensure the development of a cost-effective software product. GSD has now become a common engineering practice adopted by a significant number of multinational software development organizations, and even individuals (freelancers) are seeking numerous benefits including low development cost, highly skilled workers, and access to better development ideas. However, communication and coordination challenges remain a prominent research issue in the GSD context, while performing different project-related activities especially for Requirements Change Management (RCM). As a result, improper communication and coordination during RCM require additional time, cost, and development resources. Thus, it is of vital importance to ensure proper communication and coordination before initiating a software project. Inspired by this, current work aims at exploring and mitigating the communication and coordination challenges during RCM in the GSD context. To accomplish the targeted research objective, we performed a tertiary study to provide a landscape of the challenges that occurred during RCM in the context of GSD. Based on the performed study, we found 62 communication and 14 coordination challenges. In total, 107 mitigation strategies are explored and reported that effectively address the categorized sub-challenges of communication and coordination. Moreover, we proposed a conceptual model useful to address the communication and coordination challenges for the RCM process in GSD. Furthermore, we consulted the domain experts for the validation of the proposed conceptual model. Based on the promising results, we believe that this work supports the project managers in managing the cost and time-related issues in the GSD context. Consequently, the proposed conceptual model would help in optimally utilizing the scared software development resources.

A Conceptual Model to Address the Communication and Coordination Challenges During Requirements Change Management in Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) is a widely used development practice because of various advantages offered to the customers, vendors, and other stakeholders involved in a software project development. However, GSD is not a simple process as it faces multiple challenges that arise due to the mismanagement of the communication and coordination process. Meanwhile, Requirements Change Management (RCM) is a tedious and high resource-consuming process in GSD, which is further negatively affected by the poorly managed communication and coordination mechanisms. Multiple research studies have presented various theoretical and conceptual models to overcome the challenges during RCM in the GSD context. However, the current methodologies lack in handling the communication and coordination challenges during the RCM process in the GSD context. In the literature, the researchers have concluded that a conceptual model can effectively reduce the communication and coordination challenges during RCM in GSD. Inspired by this, the current work aims at proposing a conceptual model to overcome and mitigate the communication and coordination challenges, while ensuring the effective requirement changes at offshore software development sites. Moreover, it would help multiple stakeholders in understanding and managing the necessary resources before initiating the RCM process. To validate the proposed conceptual model, we have conducted a questionnaire-based survey to procure the results from the industrial experts working in the GSD domain. After analyzing the obtained results, we found that the proposed conceptual model is effective to handle the communication and coordination challenges up to 87%. In addition, almost 87% of the experts have agreed upon the correctness, identified challenges, and the mitigation practices in the proposed conceptual model necessary to improve the RCM process in the GSD context. Furthermore, it was observed that 75% of the experts also agreed upon the practical implementation of the proposed conceptual model in the software development industry to observe the heuristic performance of the proposed conceptual model.

Instrument of communication with voice assistant and increased security

The work is devoted to the study of commercially oriented software systems for organizing people's communication and the formation of proposals for expanding their functional capabilities, including by expanding the methods of communication and increasing the level of safety of using the tool. Voice assistants or assistants are software that can perform tasks or services for the user based on given voice commands, that is, by processing and interpreting human speech. Possibilities of expanding the standard functionality of applications, which provide for communication between users and with the system, by introducing a voice assistant into the key functions of the application, are considered. To increase the level of application data security, an analysis of existing encryption tools was performed and a proprietary algorithm based on cryptographic encryption was proposed. Ensuring confidentiality and preserving the reliability of access to the program is proposed to be implemented on the basis of user identification technologies, in particular, the use of a human identification algorithm based on characteristic points on the face. To determine the effectiveness and competitiveness of the future system, an analysis of key indicators, the achievement of which must be ensured during the development process (indicators of functional completeness, portability, expansion, productivity, competitiveness in comparison with analogues) was carried out. Factors related to requirements management, change management, and documentation processes were taken into account when analyzing the commercial development and use of a product on a startup basis. The stages of the formation of the technical task for the system with the involvement of expert groups are described in detail. Ways of improvement that will ensure a high level of success of the future application are given. The architecture of the system based on the client-server approach is designed in such a way that it allows changes to be made both at the external (connection of third-party modules) and at the internal levels (modification of existing system components and addition of new ones).

A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process to prioritize the success factors of requirement change management in global software development

AbstractPlanning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts.

Toward successful agile requirements change management process in global software development: a client–vendor analysis

Requirements change management (RCM) is an important and complicated phase in the agile for the software development process. The objective of this study was to identify and analyse the factors that can positively affect the agile RCM (ARCM) process in the context of global software development (GSD). To this end, a questionnaire survey was carried out with researcher and practitioner participants working in the field of GSD. From the 56 survey respondents, a total of 20 factors that can positively influence the ARCM activities in GSD were identified. The authors also performed a client–vendor-based analysis to investigate the significance of the considered factors for different organisation types. Additionally, they compared the data collected from researchers and practitioners. The comparison results (r s (20) = 0.076) revealed that there exists a positive correlation between the rankings in each data set. The investigated factors were mapped to ten project management book of knowledge areas, and the mapping results revealed that human resource management is the most significant knowledge area amongst the investigated factors. The findings of this study provide a robust framework to assist GSD firms in implementing ARCM activities.

Readiness model for requirements change management in global software development

AbstractRequirements Change Management (RCM) is one of the challenges faced by Global Software Development (GSD) organisations as requirements evolution is inevitable due to dynamic business and operating environments. GSD organisations face issues when dealing with RCM because many organisations embark on GSD without understanding their readiness to undertake such an initiative. Currently, there is no readiness model to assess the RCM process in the context of GSD. The objective of this study is to develop a requirements change management readiness model (RCMRM) for GSD organisations. A Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) was conducted to identify the primary studies related to RCM in the GSD projects. By using SMS, 109 primary studies were selected and 73 RCM practices were identified which were used to design the readiness levels of the proposed RCMRM. To validate the RCMRM, initially, two case studies were conducted in two GSD organisations. Based on the suggestions and recommendations of the case study participants,the RCMRM was further modified. The updated version of RCMRM was further validated by two different GSD organisations. The results of the second case study indicate that RCMRM is effective in assessing the readiness of the RCM process in the context of GSD.

A multivocal study to improve the implementation of global requirements change management process: A client‐vendor prospective

AbstractSoftware development is a complex task, and the introduction of multi‐site development teams spread across the globe makes it even harder. Requirement changes during the software development process are inevitable, and failing to manage evolving requirements is one of the contributors to project failures. Requirements change management (RCM) becomes difficult in global software development (GSD) projects due to the need to communicate and coordinate between stakeholders in a distributed environment. This research work aims to identify the factors that have positive impacts on RCM activities in GSD. We conducted a multi‐vocal literature review (MLR) and a questionnaire survey study to identify the RCM success factors. The results of the t‐test (ie, t = 0.0347 and P = .700 > .05) and correlation (rs (25) = 0.573, P = .003) indicates that there is no significant difference between the findings of MLR and the questionnaire survey. The identified factors were further analyzed in the context of client and vendor organizations to better understand the RCM success factors in both types of GSD firms. The findings of this study can provide a useful framework for tackling problems associated with RCM in a GSD environment that is significant to the progression of GSD firms.

Requirement change management challenges in GSD: An analytical hierarchy process approach

AbstractMajority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, “organizational management,” “team,” “technology,” and “process.” Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that “process” is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms.

Requirements Change Management Challenges of Global Software Development: An Empirical Investigation

The software organizations rapidly adopting global software development (GSD) to gain the economic and strategic benefits. Besides, GSD faces many challenges that mainly concerned with the requirements change management (RCM). This study aims to identify and empirically validate the factors that can negatively influence the RCM process in GSD. To this end, literature review and questionnaire survey were conducted for the investigation and validation of RCM challenges. A total of 31 RCM challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in organization types, organization size and based on experts' opinions with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges to the practitioners. Based on these identified challenges, we believe that this study can provide a framework for tackling problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to success and progression of GSD organizations.

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

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.

Identification and Prioritization of Agile Requirements Change Management Success Factors in the Domain of Global Software Development

The economic and strategic gains motivated the majority of software firms to adopt global software development (GSD). The adoption of GSD is not straightforward. The geographical distance between the GSD teams causes the various problems for the implementation of agile software development activities, particularly, that related to requirements change management in agile (ARCM). The objective of this study is to explore the success factors of ARCM in GSD context and prioritized them based on their significance. The study comprised of two steps: (1) identify the success factors of ARCM using systematic mapping study (SMS) and validate them with industry practitioners using questionnaire survey approach; (2) prioritize the identified success factors by applying the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach. A total of 21 success factors that are significant for ARCM process were identified using SMS and questionnaire survey study. The results of AHP shows that allocation of resources at overseas sites, 3C's (communication, coordination and control), geographically distributed change control board (CCB), RCM process improvement expertise and continuous top management support are the highest priority success factors of ARCM process in the context of GSD. The findings assist the practitioners to address the most priority success factors in order to successfully implement the ARCM activities in the domain of GSD.

Requirement Change Management with respect to Different Models

Changes in the requirements can be proposed by the clients continuously during the whole development cycle of the software. Those changes in requirements causes very major errors on development, cost and time etc. Because at very initial level, requirements are engineers before actual implementation. The effective approach is to handle these changes very efficiently by keeping all things and effects of that change in mind. There are different process models that tells how to handle these changes. This paper suggests different process models to handle those requirements changes. The difference between the process models and also suggest the good approach and good model to handle all these changes. Because its very important to understand, thousands of projects are flopped due to changes. In every system, a stage must come, at which you have to update your software. Some changes are come with the passage of time, and some will come immediately by the customer.

Optimized Approach in Requirements Change Management in Geographically Dispersed Environment (GDE)

Managing requirements is an essential trait in engineering development process as requirements change and emerge throughout the development process. In the following research work the primary prominence is to eke out requirements that are changing frequently in geographically dispersed setup. To efficiently and effectively cope up with the changing requirements are the key to fulfill customers’ requirements in geographically dispersed environment (GDE) and thus, appropriate procedural modeling is presented in this work to covenant with changing requirements to cut overall cost of the project and increase profitability by gratify the customers and the stakeholders. In the following research we have proposed an approach to tackle changing requirements in software development that are geographically dispersed and we have validated the presented procedural model through case scenario. Comprehensive systematic literature review has been performed in this section (II) to propose the efficient methodology in GDE, traits and risk and further to effectively eke out the evolving project’s requirements in geographically dispersed environment. Changing requirements in geologically dispersed environment can effectively be managed if the proposed MCR model followed and it will mitigate the risk and challenges which we have to face in global software development and as well as it will cut down the overall project’s cost and profitability will expectedly increase.

Systematic literature review and empirical investigation of motivators for requirements change management process in global software development

AbstractMost software development firms have adopted the concepts of global software development (GSD) to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, GSD is not a straightforward process. It is associated with many challenges that are mostly related to requirements change management (RCM). In this study, we explore the motivators that contribute to managing RCM activities in the GSD environment. We extracted a total of 25 motivators using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and conducted a survey study to empirically evaluate the findings of the SLR. The results of the applied Spearman's statistical test show that the findings of the SLR and survey study had a positive moderate correlation (rs(25) = 0.566). We further analyzed the reported motivators according to organization size. Finally, we developed taxonomies of the identified motivators based on the framework proposed by Ramasubbu and the project management body of knowledge. We believe that the taxonomies provide a robust framework for tackling the challenges of RCM, which is significant for the success and evolution of GSD firms.