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An Examination of the Effects of Requirements Changes on Software Maintenance Releases
1999 Award Winner
Alan Skillicorn, The MITRE Corporation, CO
George Stark, The IBM Corporation, Austin, TX
Paul Oman, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
Capt. Ryan Ameele, SSSG/DWSE, Peterson AFB, CO
ABSTRACT
Requirements are the foundation of the software release process. They provide the basis for estimating costs and schedules as well as developing design and testing specifications. Thus, adding to, deleting from, or modifying existing requirements that have been agreed to by both clients and maintainers during the execution of the software maintenance process impacts the cost, schedule, and quality of the resulting product. The basic problem is not with changing requirements per se, the problem is with inadequate approaches for dealing with them in a way that minimizes and communicates the impact to all stakeholders.
Using data collected from one organization on 44 software releases spanning seven products, this paper presents two quantitative techniques for dealing with requirements change in a maintenance environment. First, exploratory data analysis helps to understand the sources, frequency, and types of changes being made. Second, a regression model helps managers communicate the cost and schedule effects of changing requirements to clients and other release stakeholders. These two techniques can help an organization provide a focus for management action during the software maintenance process.
Publication
Published in 1999. Journal of Software Maintenance Research and Practice, Vol. 11, pp. 293-309.
Additional Search Keywords
requirement volatility, maintenance release management, risk, maintenance productivity, schedule prediciton
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