The Twin Peaks of Requirements and Architecture

Cleland‐Huang, Jane; Hanmer, Robert S.; Supakkul, Sam; Mirakhorli, Mehdi

doi:10.1109/ms.2013.39

Cited by 42 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…The twin peaks model emphasize on iteratively carrying out requirement engineering process and building software architecture, in parallel, in order to achieve several benefits including managing rapid changes, uncover new requirements and accommodating existing Commercial Off‐The‐Shelf software (COTS) . Even though the traditional waterfall model leads to freezing requirements before moving into design and making hard to change architecture decisions, in reality, the changes can occur in both areas, and they can affect one another . Quality attributes which is also referred as nonfunctional requirements constitute the majority of stakeholder concerns and greatly influence shaping up the architecture.…”

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of requirements volatility on software architecture: How do software teams keep up with ever‐changing requirements?

Dasanayake

Aaramaa

Markkula

et al. 2019

J Software Evolu Process

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Requirements volatility is a major issue in software development, causing problems such as higher defect density, project delays, and cost overruns. Software architecture that guides the overall vision of software product is one of the areas that is greatly affected by requirements volatility. Since critical architecture decisions are made based on the requirements at hand, changes in requirements can result significant changes in architecture. With the wide adoption of agile software development, software architectures are designed to accommodate possible future changes. However, the changes has to be carefully managed as unnecessary and excessive changes can bring negative consequences. An exploratory case study was conducted to study the impact of requirements volatility on software architecture. Fifteen semistructured, thematic interviews were conducted in a European software company. The research revealed poor communication, information distortion, and external dependencies as the main factors that cause requirement volatility and inadequate architecture documentation, inability to trace design rationale, and increased complexity as the main implications of requirements volatility on software architecture. Insights from software teams' awareness of the requirement volatility, factors contribute to it, and possible ways to mitigate its implications will be utilized to improve the management of requirement volatility during software architecting process. KEYWORDS requirements management, requirements volatility, software architecture, software teams INTRODUCTIONRequirements are added, deleted, and modified throughout the software development life cycle. Despite being seen as a natural characteristic of software projects, improper management of requirement changes can have adverse consequences on project cost, schedule, and quality of the resulting product. 1 Therefore, uncertain requirements are identified as one of the main factors that contribute to project failures. 2 While it is widely accepted that requirements changes are inevitable, significance of the potential consequences demands software teams to be aware of its existence, factors, and impacts. 3 Multiple terms including requirements change, requirements uncertainty, requirements instability, and requirements volatility are commonly associated with or related to the same phenomenon. 1,4 Requirements volatility is selected as the preferred term to be used in this study, as it not only indicates the change of requirements but also highlights their fragile nature and the potential to be changed.Software architecture that guides the overall vision of the software product is one of the areas that is greatly affected by requirements volatility. 5,6 Software architecture plays a prominent role in software development and acts as the foundation of the software systems that shapes the final outcome. Making suboptimal architecture decisions can decrease system quality and cause problems later on. 7 Since critical architecture decisions are primarily made base...

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Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of requirements volatility on software architecture: How do software teams keep up with ever‐changing requirements?

Dasanayake

Aaramaa

Markkula

et al. 2019

J Software Evolu Process

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The motivation behind RQ is justified by the acknowledgment that the comprehension of the software architecture evolution is required to tackle issues or improvements related to the software architecture and its evolution throughout releases [14] [5] [8] [7] [6] [2]. The specific research questions have the goal to gather evidence to support the answer of the stated RQ.…”

Section: Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Mapping on Visual Solutions to Support the Comprehension of Software Architecture Evolution

Filho¹,

Carneiro

Maciel

2019

International Conferences on Distributed Multimedia Systems

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Context: Software visualization has the potential to support specialized stakeholders to understand the software architecture (SA) evolution. To the best of our knowledge, there is no guideline based on which visual solutions should be applied to support the SA evolution comprehension and how to use them. Goal: Analyze the use of visual solutions for the purpose of comprehension with respect to software architecture evolution from the point of view of software architects and developers in the context of both academia and industry. Method: We conducted a Systematic Mapping Study to achieve the stated goal. Results: The study identified 92 papers published from January 2000 to December 2018 as a result of the search strings execution. We selected 12 primary studies and identified a gap in terms of a taxonomy to assist specialists in the development or classification of solutions to support the comprehension of software architecture evolution using visual resources. Conclusion: We observed that despite the relevance of the use of visual solutions to support the comprehension of software architecture evolution, only 12 studies have reported these initiatives, suggesting that there is still room for the use of different visual metaphors to represent its components, relationships and evolution throughout the releases.

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“…RE/BA does not exist in isolation but is a part of an overall software development process and strongly influences e.g. : software architecture [25] or testing (also verification & validation in general) [26]. When developing and presenting recommendations, it would be worthwhile to take into account contextual factors and consequences to software project activities and artefacts other than just those directly related to RE/BA.…”

Section: Proceedings Of the Fedcsis Poznań 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Effectiveness of Recommendations to Requirements-Related Problems through Interviews with Experts

Jarzębowicz

Ślesiński

2018

Annals of Computer Science and Information Systems

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Requirements Engineering and Business Analysis are known as very important to software project outcome but also difficult activities, coping with many problems and challenges. The work reported in this paper was preceded by a survey which revealed most common requirements-related problems in Polish IT industry. We addressed ten most frequently reported problems by reviewing the literature for recommendations how to cope with those problems. The resulting set of recommendations is included in the paper. Next, we conducted interviews with three experienced IT analysts asking them to assess effectiveness of particular recommendations, based on their experience. The results show significant differences in assessments and indicate that effectiveness is dependent on contextual factors to a large extent. Our conclusion is that a follow-up work is required to document more recommendations and to annotate them with guidelines about applicability, intended context of use and possible pitfalls. I.

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The Twin Peaks of Requirements and Architecture

Cited by 42 publications

References 4 publications

Impact of requirements volatility on software architecture: How do software teams keep up with ever‐changing requirements?

Impact of requirements volatility on software architecture: How do software teams keep up with ever‐changing requirements?

A Systematic Mapping on Visual Solutions to Support the Comprehension of Software Architecture Evolution

Assessing Effectiveness of Recommendations to Requirements-Related Problems through Interviews with Experts

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