A simulation approach for impact analysis of requirement volatility considering dependency change

Abstract

Requirement volatility is a common and inevitable project risk which has severe consequences on software projects. When requirement change occurs, a project manager wants to analyze its impact so as to better cope with it. As the modification to one requirement can cause changes in its dependent requirements and its dependency relationship, the impact analysis can be very complex. This paper proposes a simulation approach DepRVSim (Requirement Volatility Simulation considering Dependency relationship) to assessing this sort of impact. We abstract the general patterns of the influence mechanism, which may trigger modification in its dependency relationship and bring changes in other requirements through dependency. DepRVSim can generate such information as the probability distribution of effort deviation and schedule deviation. As a proof-of-concept, the applicability of DepRVSim is demonstrated with an illustrative case study of a real software project. Results indicate that DepRVSim is able to provide experimental evidence for decision making when requirement changes. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.