A Holistic Categorization Framework for Literature on Engineering Change Management

Abstract

Engineering changes are inevitable and might propagate within and across multiple boundaries. Their management has increasingly become relevant within the interdisciplinary field of systems engineering. A few literature categorization frameworks arising from literature reviews have been proposed to structure the research field of engineering change management. However, the literature reviews are limited in scope, and the existing categorization frameworks do not provide sufficient coverage of the research field in its broader context. This paper addresses both shortcomings. First, a new, holistic and process-oriented literature categorization framework is proposed. Second, this proposed framework is used to categorize a comprehensive list of 427 publications in engineering change management. This categorization highlights not only research areas which have gained much attention, but also those where little research has been done. Third, a citation analysis is conducted which reveals the links between the publications and indicates the most cited publications. The result of this paper will help researchers and managers to (1) navigate through the state of the art in engineering change management, (2) position their work in the overall picture of engineering change management, (3) focus on the identified research gaps and weak points, and (4) search for further research and improvement opportunities. 473 Regular Paperalong the EC process. Second, it provides a relatively complete picture of research in ECM by positioning 384 journal articles and conference papers and 43 books, book sections, and reports in the proposed framework. Third, it presents a citation analysis for selected publications of the core ECM categories. The paper is structured in five remaining sections. Section 2 provides the background for the proposed categorization framework by defining EC and ECM and elaborating existing literature reviews and categorization frameworks. Section 3 introduces the proposed categorization framework. Section 4 presents the literature survey, positioning, and citation analysis; Section 5 discusses those results; and Section 6 concludes the paper.

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