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

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. INDEX TERMS Requirement change management (RCM), global software development (GSD), challenges, global project structures, systematic literature review (SLR).

Improving the Requirements Engineering Process Through Automated Support: An Industrial Case Study

“…As stated by Portillo-Rodriguez [4] and Anwer [12] there is a need for tools that support software engineering processes in the context of DSD and more specially requirements management. Most of the existing tools considers issue tracker as the main feature.…”

“…to minimize problems such as: geographic dispersion, control and coordination breakdown, communication, team engagement and sociocultural differences. Moreover, It is important to propose and analyze tools in real scenarios [4] [12]. We describe some existing requirements management tools in the following paragraphs.…”

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

“…Anwer et al [43] identified the in-house development and offshore development challenges during RCM. They further differentiated the challenges based on their impact on the project development and categorized them using T-test, Chi-square test, and regression analysis.…”

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

“…Lai and Ali, 17 Ramzan and Ikram, 52 Akbar et al, 53 Kamal et al, 54 and Shafiq et al 1 underlined that less effort had been directed towards developing the RCM tools and techniques in the GSD context. Anwer et al 55 mentioned that eight out of 10 software firms working in GSD faced RCM problems owing to poor planning and ineffective RCM standards and tools. The RCM process faced additional challenges that do not exist in the collocated development environment (e.g., language, cultural, and time zone differences) 56,57 …”