Requirements Engineering Challenges in Large-Scale Agile System Development

Kasauli, Rashidah; Liebel, Grischa; Knauss, Eric; Gopakumar, Swathi; Kanagwa, Benjamin

doi:10.1109/re.2017.60

Cited by 57 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Kasauli et al highlighted project requirement–related challenges in a distributed agile development. The results of their study were based on qualitative approaches, including interviews, and focus group techniques.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing challenges of agile process in distributed software development environment using analytic hierarchy process

Shameem

Kumar

et al. 2018

J Software Evolu Process

101

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Software organizations are increasingly combining agile methodologies and distributed software development (DSD) for efficiently and effectively built software products. There are numerous challenges associated with scaling agile methods in a distributed environment. Our study is intended to explore and prioritize the challenges for scaling agile practices in the DSD environment. This study was divided into 3 stages. In the first stage, 22 challenges were identified from literature review and grouped into 4 categories: management, team, technology, and process based on discussion with experts. In the second stage, an online questionnaire study was conducted to validate the identified challenges. Finally, analytic hierarchy process method was used to prioritize challenges and their categories based on their relative importance. The results highlighted that management is a most significant category as compared with the other categories.Similarly, lack of management commitments, lack of effective communication, lack of knowledge sharing, etc are identified as the most significant challenges that need to be focused by the organizations for scaling agile methodologies. On the basis of the research findings, we could conclude that the identified challenges along with their categories provide a robust framework to scale agile methodologies in the DSD environment. KEYWORDSagile development, AHP, challenges, distributed software development, multiple-criteria decision making INTRODUCTIONOver the last 2 decades, a variety of models and processes have been developed for the effective management of software development activities.Among these, agile is the most significant process that has been introduced to provide opportunities to manage the dynamic behavior of system development activities. 1,2 Agile is a lightweight software development approach that promotes continuous iterations of development and testing throughout the software development life cycle. 2 Various agile methods have been developed, and the most popular among these are extreme programming (XP), crystal, scrum, adaptive software development, and feature-driven development. 3 The underlying philosophy of agile methods is derived from the agile manifesto developed by several system development experts who designed different methodologies on the basis of similar ideals. 2 This philosophy primarily focuses on teamwork, the importance of individuals and their interactions, early product delivery, collaboration with the customers, and effective responses to change requirements. 4 Agile methods were originally designed for small and single-team projects. 2,3 However, few research studies have claimed the successful implementation of agile methods in a distributed environment in large-scale organizations. 3,5 Despite some successful implementations of agile methods, Abbreviations: ANA, antinuclear antibodies; APC, antigen-presenting cells; IRF, interferon regulatory factor J Softw Evol Proc. 2018;30:e1979. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smr

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing challenges of agile process in distributed software development environment using analytic hierarchy process

Shameem

Kumar

et al. 2018

J Software Evolu Process

101

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“…Scaling agile software development in large organizations is complex and poses several challenges . Large projects require appropriate coordination and communication between teams, dependencies between teams need to be managed, other nonagile units need to be involved, and the right people need to be part of the process .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling agile in large organizations: Practices, challenges, and success factors

Kalenda

Hyna²,

Rossi

2018

J Software Evolu Process

121

113

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Context: Agile software development has nowadays reached wide adoption. However, moving agile to large‐scale contexts is a complex task with many challenges involved. Objective: In this paper, we review practices, challenges, and success factors for scaling agile both from literature and within a large software company, identifying the most critical factors. Method: We conduct a focused literature review to map the importance of scaling practices, challenges, and success factors. The outcome of this focused literature review is used to guide action research within a software company with a view to scaling agile processes. Results: Company culture, prior agile and lean experience, management support, and value unification were found to be key success factors during the action research process. Resistance to change, an overly aggressive roll‐out time frame, quality assurance concerns, and integration into preexisting nonagile business processes were found to be the critical challenges in the scaling process. Conclusion: The action research process allowed to cross‐fertilize ideas from literature to the company's context. Scaling agile within an organization does not need to follow a specific scheme, rather the process can be tailored to the needs while keeping the core values and principles of agile methodologies.

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“…Recently, a growing number of empirical papers discusses requirements engineering challenges in agile development [3], [1], [4] as well as the need to identify new ways of managing requirements in agile organizations [2]. In Table I, we select a subset of these challenges that is especially relevant to tooling in our company context.…”

Section: T-reqs Vs Challenges and Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When exploring new functionality or product ideas, experimental requirements need to be treated differently from stable requirements. Still, they need to be captured and later integrated in the system view [4].…”

Section: T-reqs Vs Challenges and Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, traditional tooling does not sufficiently support addressing known RE challenges in large-scale agile [1], [2], [3]. In particular, it is hard to cross the boundaries between three domains in largescale agile organizations: the customer facing domain, the development domain, and the system domain [4]. Agile crossfunctional teams must be aware of requirements at system level and able to efficiently propose updates to those requirements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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T-Reqs: Tool Support for Managing Requirements in Large-Scale Agile System Development

Knauss

Liebel

Horkoff

et al. 2018

2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)

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T-Reqs is a text-based requirements management solution based on the git version control system. It combines useful conventions, templates and helper scripts with powerful existing solutions from the git ecosystem and provides a working solution to address some known requirements engineering challenges in large-scale agile system development. Specifically, it allows agile cross-functional teams to be aware of requirements at system level and enables them to efficiently propose updates to those requirements. Based on our experience with T-Reqs, we i) relate known requirements challenges of large-scale agile system development to tool support; ii) list key requirements for tooling in such a context; and iii) propose concrete solutions for challenges.

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Requirements Engineering Challenges in Large-Scale Agile System Development

Cited by 57 publications

References 26 publications

Prioritizing challenges of agile process in distributed software development environment using analytic hierarchy process

Prioritizing challenges of agile process in distributed software development environment using analytic hierarchy process

Scaling agile in large organizations: Practices, challenges, and success factors

T-Reqs: Tool Support for Managing Requirements in Large-Scale Agile System Development

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