Analysis of Requirements Volatility in Elicitation Process : A Systematic Literature Review & Survey

Sammanfattning: Context: In the requirements engineering phase, requirements elicitation is considered as the most important task as it is the initial phase in which the requirements are gathered and prioritised. Changes in requirements may lead to project failure or delay in project deliveries. So, it is essential to elicit the requirements at the early stage to avoid changes in requirements in the later stage of development. Therefore, there is a need to study the impact of volatility in elicitation techniques to gather requirements appropriately in the early stages. Objectives: In the present thesis, we focused on the analysis of the requirements volatility in the requirement elicitation phase. The main objectives we have formulated to achieve our goal are Objective 1: To identify and determine the various causes of requirement volatility. Objective 2: To examine the impact of requirement volatility in the requirement elicitation process. Objective 3: To examine whether the procedure of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Methods: In this thesis, we have implemented a Systematic Literature Review(SLR) and Survey research methods in order to attain our aim and objectives. SLR is performed for objective 1, to receive the data about the causes of volatility in various development life cycle phases. A survey is conducted to identify the causes of volatility in all phases of development, in the elicitation phase, and check whether the process of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Results: From the SLR and survey, numerous factors of causes of volatility on the software development lifecycle were identified. Several new factors were identified from both the research methods. The factors have its own interpretation for the cause of volatility. Moreover, from the survey results, we can determine that the volatility occurs in the elicitation phase and has a huge impact while eliciting the requirements. Most of the practitioners working with the agile development process and waterfall model have stated that the impact of volatility results in prolonging the elicitation phase, slowing down the project, etc. Conclusions: For this research, our contribution is to provide insights on the impact of volatility in the elicitation process and check whether the elicitation techniques and its process change due to volatility. Based on the results of the respondents, we can conclude that the elicitation techniques procedure change is not intentional and not only because of the volatility but also due to some external factors while eliciting the requirements.