The software organizations are outsourcing their development activities across the geographical border due to huge business gains. However, the adoption of the global software development (GSD) paradigm is not straightforward; various challenges are associated with it, particularly related to the requirements engineering (RE) process. The objective of this study is to identify the barriers to the RE process faced during GSD. To achieve this, we have conducted a systematic mapping study and questionnaire survey to identify and validate the barriers of the RE process with industry practitioners. A total of 20 barriers were identified and validated with the experts. Moreover, we have performed organization types (client and vendor), organization size (small, medium, and large) and experts’ levels (junior, intermediate, and senior) based analysis to provide a clear understanding of the RE barriers in the three different context. Besides, we have also developed a theoretical framework by mapping the investigated barriers into six core knowledge areas of software process improvement. The mapping results indicated that project administration is the most significant knowledge area of investigated barriers. We believe that the findings of this study will provide a framework that assists the GSD practitioners in developing an effective plan and strategies to improve the RE process in the GSD context.

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A Systematic Study to Improve the Requirements Engineering Process in the Domain of Global Software Development

Requirements prioritization shows significant role during effective implementation of requirements. Prioritization of requirements is not easy process particularly when requirements are large in size. The current methods of prioritization face limitations as the current prioritization techniques for functional requirements rely on the responses of stakeholders instead of prioritizing requirements on the basis of internal dependencies of one requirement on other requirements. Moreover, there is need to classify requirements on the basis of their importance i.e. how much they are needed for other requirements or dependent on other requirements. Requirements are first represented with spanning trees and then prioritized. Suggested spanning tree based approach is evaluated on requirements of ODOO ERP. Requirements are assigned to four developers. Time estimation with and without prioritization are calculated. The difference in time estimation with prioritization and without prioritization shows the significance of prioritization of functional requirements.

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Prioritization of Software Functional Requirements: Spanning Tree based Approach

Requirements management is not easy task especially in global software development where clients and vendors are far away from each other’s. For successful implementation of any software project, proper and efficient requirements management is necessary. Purpose of this current work is development of requirements management model (RMM) that can address the factors that have positive impact and the factors that have negative impact during management of requirements. The propose model will provide solutions to the challenges during requirement management. Systematic literature review (SLR) and empirical research study will be conducted for achieving the goals and objectives. The expected results of this study will be RMM that will help vendor organizations in better management of software requirements.

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Requirements Management Model (RMM): A Proposed Model for Successful Delivery of Software Projects

Requirements prioritization plays important role for a successful requirements implementation. Functional requirements, in specific, represents the specification of behavior between the inputs and outputs. They are prioritized based on the high-level requirements of the system and subsystems functionalities, as well as the type of software, expected users and the type of system where the software is used. Nonetheless, prioritization of functional requirements is very challenging considering a project where the requirements are huge. In practice, prioritization of functional requirements highly depends on stakeholders' preference for giving priorities in features selection instead of based on its internal structure and characteristics. This is because the key information in functional requirements concern on business processes, security, performance, data migration and conversion. This paper proposes a graph-based approach for prioritizing functional requirements using directed acyclic graphs for relating requirements with one another on the basis of its importance to overall project and how much it is required for other requirements. The proposed approach is then evaluated in terms of total time estimation to project completion. The experimental results showed that the graph-based approach is able to effectively prioritize functional requirements with lower estimated project completion time as compared to non-prioritized requirements. The approach will help software vendors to deliver projects well within the total project duration.

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A Graph Based Approach to Prioritization of Software Functional Requirements

Effective requirement implementation leads to successful delivery of software. The requirement engineering (RE) is very difficult when implemented locally but the case is worst in global software development (GSD). There exist challenges such as ‘Lack of effective communication’, ‘Organizational change’, ‘Lack of coordination and collaboration’, ‘Lack of knowledge-sharing and awareness’ in GSD and to minimize the effect of these challenges success factors such as ‘Support of collaborative tools’, ‘Global project management’, ‘Requirement Engineering modelling’, and ‘Proper negotiation and discussion’ are suggested by many authors. To decrease the effect of challenges and to successfully implement success factors, practices and solutions are needed. The objective of this research is to find the practices needed to successfully implement RE process. Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is conducted for the identification of these practices

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Identification of Practices for Proper Implementation of Requirements in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review Protocol

Context: Successful requirement engineering (RE) leads to successful delivery of software. There exist a lot of challenges during RE process especially in Global Software Development (GSD). The aim of this study is to find challenges during RE in context of GSD. Objective: The objective is to find and analyze the challenges in RE process. Method: Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is used as research method to achieve the goals. Result: SLR protocol is developed. Expected output of this study is to list out all challenges which the stakeholders are facing in implementing RE in the context of GSD through SLR. As a result of SLR protocol, 71 papers are identified.

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Critical Challenges for Requirement Implementation in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review Protocol with Preliminary Results

Requirement's elicitation is the process of gathering requirements from users, customers, and stakeholders using traditional or collaborative elicitation techniques. Software requirement gathering is a challenging task particularly in a Global Software Development (GSD) paradigm due to geographical distance, limited face to face meetings, time zone differences, and language and cultural barriers. As more companies begin to adopt GSD in order to save costs, the success factors need to be identified and evaluated in order to ensure a successful elicitation process. This paper offers an in‐depth analysis on success factors for requirement elicitation within GSD environment. First, all possible success factors are identified from the literature via a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Next, these factors are evaluated by software industries via a questionnaire survey across different types and levels of experts, size of organizations, and from the client–vendor perspective. The relationships between the success factors and the survey results were evaluated using the Spearman's correlation coefficient. The results produced a 0.835 Spearman's correlation coefficient at significance level ρ = 0.000, which showed a strong positive correlation between the outcome of SLR and survey with no significant difference.

Success factors analysis for requirement elicitation in global software development paradigm: An empirical study

A hybrid technique using minimal spanning tree and analytic hierarchical process to prioritize functional requirements for parallel software development

Muhammad Yaseen

Papers

Critical Challenges for Requirement Implementation in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review Protocol with Preliminary Results

Requirements Management Model (RMM): A Proposed Model for Successful Delivery of Software Projects

Identification of Practices for Proper Implementation of Requirements in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review Protocol

Success factors analysis for requirement elicitation in global software development paradigm: An empirical study

A hybrid technique using minimal spanning tree and analytic hierarchical process to prioritize functional requirements for parallel software development