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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]

The phenomena of global software development (GSD) face many challenges that are specifically associated with software process improvement (SPI). The main objective of this work is to develop the prioritization-based taxonomy of the SPI success factors using the fuzzy AHP approach. Total of twenty-one factors were extracted from the available literature that were further evaluated by conducting questionnaire survey with the SPI experts. In the second stage, multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) fuzzy AHP tool was used to prioritize and develop the taxonomy of the identified factors and their categories. The implications of fuzzy AHP approach are novel in this research area as it has been successfully used previously in different other domains e.g. electrical and electronics, supplier selection, agile software development and personnel selection. The contribution of this study is not only limited to the development of the factor's taxonomy, but also their proper prioritization by introducing the novel fuzzy AHP approach in the research field of GSD and SPI, which assist to remove the vagueness and uncertainty in the opinion of the process improvement experts. • Identifying the factors which positively affects the SPI practices in GSD environment. • Categorizing the identified factors according to their types. • Identifying the factors in the real world practices which positively affects the SPI practices in GSD environment. • Prioritizing the success factors using fuzzy AHP methods by collecting responses of pair-wise comparison of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]