Managing evolving requirements in an outsourcing context: an industrial experience report

Abstract

In this paper we discuss several difficulties managing evolving requirements by means of an industrial case study conducted at LogicaCMG. We report on setting up a requirements management system in an outsourcing context and its application in real-life. The experience results in several lessons learned, questions to be answered in the future on how to manage evolving requirements, and solution directions. We propose a conceptual framework of a requirements engineering system tailored for outsourcing environments, which captures the experience results.

An industrial case study in reconstructing requirements views

“…According to Von Knethen, defining a workable traceability model is a neglected activity in many approaches. Our earlier research confirms the importance of defining a traceability model (Lormans et al 2004). Some initial experiments concerned a static traceability model.…”

“…For managing the requirements in this particular case, LogicaCMG was forced to make separate requirements documents in which the traceability was manually set by the requirements engineers. Some of the mechanisms used for managing requirements evolution in this setting are described in our earlier work dealing with the same case study (Lormans et al 2004).…”

“…The creation of requirements views necessitates an accurate traceability matrix, which, in practice, turns out to be very hard to obtain and maintain (Gotel and Finkelstein 1994;Dömges and Pohl 1998;Graaf et al 2003;Ramesh et al 1995;Lindvall and Sandahl 1996). The tools currently available on the market, such as Telelogic DOORS and IBM Rational RequisitePro, are often not sufficient: keeping the traceability consistent using these tools is hard and involves significant effort (Lormans et al 2004;Alexander 2002).…”

Requirements Traceability across Organizational Boundaries - A Survey and Taxonomy

“…Lormans et al [9] conducted an industrial case study with a single international company to understand how requirements traceability is impacted by the outsourcing context. The authors specified requirements for a requirements management system in the context of inter-organizational development.…”

“…Further, various researchers recognized that inter-organizational specifics need to be carefully considered when applying requirements traceability in the outsourcing context. Beside the small case study on requirements traceability within an international company by Lormans et al [9], there are no empirical studies that examined the specific challenges of leverage requirements traceability in inter-organizational projects. To close this gap in this relevant area of software development, we found that a systematic study of this problem is necessary.…”