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The software industry has widely adopted global software development (GSD) to gain economic benefits. Organizations that engage in GSD face various challenges, the majority being associated with requirements change management (RCM). The key motive of this study is to develop a requirement change management and implementation maturity model (SRCMIMM) for the GSD industry that could help the practitioners to assess and manage their RCM activities. A systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approach are used to identify and validate the critical success factors (CSFs), critical challenges (CCHs), and the related best practices of the RCM process. The investigated CSFs and CCHs are classified into five maturity levels based on the concepts of the existing maturity models in other domains, practitioners' feedback, and academic research. Every maturity level comprises different CSFs and CCHs that can help assess and manage a firm's RCM capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, four case studies are conducted in different GSD firms. The SRCMIMM has been developed to assist GSD organizations in improving their RCM process in efficiency and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software traceability plays a critical role in software maintenance and evolution. We conducted a systematic mapping study with six research questions to understand the benefits, costs, and challenges of using traceability in maintenance and evolution. We systematically selected, analyzed, and synthesized 63 studies published between January 2000 and May 2020, and the results show that traceability supports 11 maintenance and evolution activities, among which change management is the most frequently supported activity; strong empirical evidence from industry is needed to validate the impact of traceability on maintenance and evolution; easing the process of change management is the main benefit of deploying traceability practices; establishing and maintaining traceability links is the main cost of deploying traceability practices; 13 approaches and 32 tools that support traceability in maintenance and evolution were identified; improving the quality of traceability links, the performance of using traceability approaches, and tools are the main traceability challenges in maintenance and evolution. The findings of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of deploying traceability practices in software maintenance and evolution phase and can be used by researchers for future directions and practitioners for making informed decisions while using traceability in maintenance and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of organizations have adopted offshore software development (OSD) practices to support their software development in terms of reducing time to market, access to technical talent and lower costs. There is a lack of understandings of the factors associated with successful management of OSD projects. The objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that contribute to successful management of OSD projects. First, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify a set of factors that influence successful management of OSD projects. Second, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the findings of the SLR to collect feedback from industry practitioners. Finally, we prioritized the success factors using the analytic hierarchy process. In total, 36 success factors were identified. Findings of the study indicate that standards and procedures, change management engineering and trust building between distributed teams are key factors for the successful execution OSD projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements Change Management (RCM) is one of the challenges faced by Global Software Development (GSD) organisations as requirements evolution is inevitable due to dynamic business and operating environments. GSD organisations face issues when dealing with RCM because many organisations embark on GSD without understanding their readiness to undertake such an initiative. Currently, there is no readiness model to assess the RCM process in the context of GSD. The objective of this study is to develop a requirements change management readiness model (RCMRM) for GSD organisations. A Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) was conducted to identify the primary studies related to RCM in the GSD projects. By using SMS, 109 primary studies were selected and 73 RCM practices were identified which were used to design the readiness levels of the proposed RCMRM. To validate the RCMRM, initially, two case studies were conducted in two GSD organisations. Based on the suggestions and recommendations of the case study participants,the RCMRM was further modified. The updated version of RCMRM was further validated by two different GSD organisations. The results of the second case study indicate that RCMRM is effective in assessing the readiness of the RCM process in the context of GSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Majority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, "organizational management," "team," "technology," and "process." Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that "process" is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most software development firms have adopted the concepts of global software development (GSD) to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, GSD is not a straightforward process. It is associated with many challenges that are mostly related to requirements change management (RCM). In this study, we explore the motivators that contribute to managing RCM activities in the GSD environment. We extracted a total of 25 motivators using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and conducted a survey study to empirically evaluate the findings of the SLR. The results of the applied Spearman's statistical test show that the findings of the SLR and survey study had a positive moderate correlation (rs(25) = 0.566). We further analyzed the reported motivators according to organization size. Finally, we developed taxonomies of the identified motivators based on the framework proposed by Ramasubbu and the project management body of knowledge. We believe that the taxonomies provide a robust framework for tackling the challenges of RCM, which is significant for the success and evolution of GSD firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of global software development (GSD) has been adopted by a majority of the software development firms to achieve the significant benefits it offers. However, there are many challenges faced by the GSD organizations, which are mainly related to requirements change management (RCM). The key objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process in GSD domain. The systematic literature review (SLR) approach has been used to investigate the challenges of RCM activities, and a total of 30 challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations, aiming to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types according to the organization size (small, medium sized, or large), which highlights the significance of each challenge for a specific organizational size. In addition, the criticality of the identified challenges was assessed using the criteria of challenges having a frequency greater than or equal to 50%. According to the findings of this study, a framework is provided that could help GSD organizations address the problems related to RCM in a GSD environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]