Multilevel Ontology Framework for Improving Requirements Change Management in Global Software Development

Abstract

Requirements engineering is one of the most important pillars of software engineering. Its success contributes greatly to that of the software as a whole. In fact, the software development process is not devoid from changing requirements, which affects the cost, time, and quality of the final software. The change problem is unavoidable and also swells when the development of the software is made globally. Therefore, there is a need to improve the quality of requirements change management (RCM), especially in global software development (GSD) environments. Our research hypothesis is that the RCM is naturally a knowledge-intensive process that can benefit substantially from ontology. Indeed, we assume that using a multilevel ontology framework will greatly support RCM in GSD environments by ensuring the semantic correctness of the requirement change request and accordingly solving miscommunication and misunderstanding problems. The framework was successfully evaluated using a questionnaire and a case study. The results indicate that using the proposed framework can intensely improve the semantic correctness of requirement change requests. Accordingly, the entire RCM process is then improved by increasing the reliability of the change and reducing the time consumed for dealing with semantically wrong change requests. INDEX TERMS Requirement engineering, global software development, requirement change management, change requests, ontology.

A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Ontology in Modeling Knowledge in Software Development Processes

“…5. Resolving the requirement change in software development: can improve the RCM processes, increase the reliability of the changes and reduce the time consume for dealing with semantically change requests in software development [14] .…”

“…Improvement in Software Development. The requirement change request in software development can consume time and deal with semantically wrong change requests [14] . The solution is to develop a multilevel ontology framework .…”

“…Knowledge abstraction [11] . The heterogeneous data and rapid change in software requirements [14] can make an impact on the limited understanding of software requirements [11] , and it can be handled by developing a collaborative framework ontology and scrum agile software engineering [22] .…”

“…Freq Study Modeling the Data in software development 5 Bhatia et al [2] , Valiente et al [11] , Puchianu and Bautu [18] , Rocha et al [19] , Beydoun et al [20] Database and application integration 5 Asfand-E-Yar and Ali [3] , Junior et al [4] , Petnga and Austin [21] , Takhom et al [22] , Adnan and Afzal [23] Describe the knowledge using common vocabulary 6 Asfand-E-Yar and Ali [3] , Junior et al [4] , Jannath and S [12] , Petnga and Austin [21] , Takhom et al [22] , Adnan and Afzal [23] To Resolve Requirement change in Software Development 3 Alsanad et al [14] , Gregorio et al [24] Maintenance software testing 2 Popereshnyak and Vecherkovskaya [1] , García-Peñalvo et al [13] Building the concept of software quality 1 Alsanad et al [14] Developing systems in data integration 1 John et al [25] Application pattern in software development 1 Deb et al [26] Software development model 1 De Graaf et al [27] Techniques for detecting changes to software systems 1 Peldszus et al [28] Software development process 1 Abdalazeim and Meziane [29] Software data model 1 Dahling et al [30] Software development data model process 1 Olszewska and Allison [31] Modeling software knowledge 1 Wen and Katt [32] Tools for building software 1 Stadnicki et al [33] Technical model software 1 Zou et al [34] Software engineering process 1 Murtazina and Avdeenko [35] Software development process 2 Wongthongtham et al [36] , Ortega-Ordoñez et al [37] Software measurement & systems Integration 1 Fonseca et al [38] Real-time...…”

Requirement Change Management Techniques in Software Systems

“…By using a questionnaire and a case study, this framework was appraised successfully. iv [4] Critical phase of SDLC is Requirement Engineering. Many Challenges are being posed by the evaluation of Business and technology which becomes the reasons of changes in requirements.…”