Managing Requirements Change the Informal Way: When Saying ‘No’ is Not an Option

Abstract

Abstract-Software has always been considered as malleable.Changes to software requirements are inevitable during the development process. Despite many software engineering advances over several decades, requirements changes are a source of project risk, particularly when businesses and technologies are evolving rapidly. Although effectively managing requirements changes is a critical aspect of software engineering, conceptions of requirements change in the literature and approaches to their management in practice still seem rudimentary. The overall goal of this study is to better understand the process of requirements change management. We present findings from an exploratory case study of requirements change management in a globally distributed setting. In this context we noted a contrast with the traditional models of requirements change. In theory, change control policies and formal processes are considered as a natural strategy to deal with requirements changes. Yet we observed that "informal requirements changes" (InfRc) were pervasive and unavoidable. Our results reveal an equally 'natural' informal change management process that is required to handle InfRc in parallel. We present a novel model of requirements change which, we argue, better represents the phenomenon and more realistically incorporates both the informal and formal types of change.

A Systematic Approach for Identifying Requirement Change Management Challenges

“…Our study discovered ten challenges of general RCM process, which are listed in Table 3 with frequencies (appears in how many papers) and their mapping with RCMP outcomes. [4,7].…”

“…A number of factors have driven these changes, such as evolving customer needs or business goals, organizational policies, working or system operating environment, and government regulations. Similarly, having various ways to express the requirements by different stakeholders also results in ambiguity and inconsistency in requirements, and causes requirement change [7]. Furthermore, because of various benefits such as low cost, access to skillful teams, and access to market, many companies has adopted GSD paradigm [8].…”

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

“…Hussain et al [7] proposed a technique to handle requested change in an informal way instead of following a defined formal process, means that, they will simply start implementing the requested change without the approval of change control board and storing the change in a change request pool. Their proposed approach is only suitable to handle graphical user interface problems, and it seems to be difficult to generalize for a complete problem domain.…”

“…Among the challenges, the most cited challenge for RCM process in in-house context is impact analysis (67%). In RCM process, once proposed change has been identified, further analysis is required to understand the consequences of requested change on the software system, such as new system states, consistency with existing business goals and impact on other operational constraints [7], [67]. Bohner and Arnold defined impact analysis as ''the activity of identifying consequences, including the side effects and ripple effects of a change''.…”

“…Requirements Change Management (RCM) is a complex process and driven by many factors such as organizational policies, market trends, and operational environments [6]. In recent years, several RCM models have been proposed in literature to improve RCM [7]- [9]. At the same time, a few reviews have been carried out to explore the different aspects of the RCM models [10]- [12].…”