Investigation of the requirements change management challenges in the domain of global software development

Abstract

The phenomenon of global software development (GSD) has been adopted by a majority of the software development firms to achieve the significant benefits it offers. However, there are many challenges faced by the GSD organizations, which are mainly related to requirements change management (RCM). The key objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process in GSD domain. The systematic literature review (SLR) approach has been used to investigate the challenges of RCM activities, and a total of 30 challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations, aiming to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types according to the organization size (small, medium sized, or large), which highlights the significance of each challenge for a specific organizational size. In addition, the criticality of the identified challenges was assessed using the criteria of challenges having a frequency greater than or equal to 50%. According to the findings of this study, a framework is provided that could help GSD organizations address the problems related to RCM in a GSD environment. KEYWORDS client and vendor challenges, global software development (GSD), requirement change management (RCM), size-based classification, systematic literature review (SLR)

A Systematic Study to Improve the Requirements Engineering Process in the Domain of Global Software Development

“…The maturity level of the R-CMM model enabled the software firms to access and improve their RE activities. To address the issues in the software industry, R-CMM also provides the best practices, which are useful to address the faced complexities during the RE process [21], [25]. Pandey et al [26] introduced a model for requirements collection and management process.…”

“…In spite of the significance of RE in SDLC, the RE process is not standardized yet in the context of GSD [9], [18], [19]. Very few empirical studies were conducted to explore the barriers of the RE process in the domain of GSD [15], [20], [21]. We believe that a better understanding of barriers helpful in tackling the problems of the RE process in the GSD environment.…”

Prioritization Based Taxonomy of DevOps Security Challenges Using PROMETHEE

“…This approach will assist to collect responses from industrial practitioners working to secure DevOps activities. The questionnaire approach provides the best opportunity to collect practitioner's opinion from large population [31][32][33][34][35].…”

Multicriteria Decision Making Taxonomy of Cloud-Based Global Software Development Motivators

“…The findings of SLR are more valid and comprehensive compared with informal literature reviews. The SLR is a widely adopted research methodology in software engineering [8,32,33]. The phase of the SLR approach is given in Figure 1 and discussed in the following sections:…”