Toward an Agile Approach to Managing the Effect of Requirements on Software Architecture during Global Software Development

Abstract

Requirement change management (RCM) is a critical activity during software development because poor RCM results in occurrence of defects, thereby resulting in software failure. To achieve RCM, efficient impact analysis is mandatory. A common repository is a good approach to maintain changed requirements, reusing and reducing effort. Thus, a better approach is needed to tailor knowledge for better change management of requirements and architecture during global software development (GSD).The objective of this research is to introduce an innovative approach for handling requirements and architecture changes simultaneously during global software development. The approach makes use of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and agile practices. Agile practices make our approach iterative, whereas CBR stores requirements and makes them reusable. Twin Peaks is our base model, meaning that requirements and architecture are handled simultaneously. For this research, grounded theory has been applied; similarly, interviews from domain experts were conducted. Interview and literature transcripts formed the basis of data collection in grounded theory. Physical saturation of theory has been achieved through a published case study and developed tool. Expert reviews and statistical analysis have been used for evaluation. The proposed approach resulted in effective change management of requirements and architecture simultaneously during global software development.