A Longitudinal Study of Requirements Volatility in Software Development
Software development is considered to be a dynamic process where demands for changes seem to be inevitable. Modifications to software are prompted by all kinds of changes including changes to the requirements. Changes to requirements give rise to an intrinsic volatility, which impacts on the software development lifecycle. Requirements Volatility (RV) is considered to be a major source of risk to the management of software projects. Investigating the sources and impacts of requirements changes is an important prerequisite for understanding the nature of requirements volatility. This increased understanding will improve the process of requirements change management and ultimately software development.
In this presentation, Dr Didar Zowghi will discuss the results of her longitudinal study of Requirements Volatility over the last 10 years. She has conducted extensive empirical studies of RV focusing on identifying source of, reasons for, and impacts of RV during software development project. She has also investigated the strategies used by practitioners to manage RV. The results have facilitated a better understanding of this complex phenomenon and have provided insight on how to improve requirements engineering practices to manage RV more effectively.
Dr Didar Zowghi
Dr Zowghi is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Prior to becoming a full time academic in 1990, she worked in IT industry both in the UK and Australia as a programmer, analyst, consultant, and project manager. Dr Zowghi's research in the last 12 years has focused on software development processes and in particular the early phases of the development lifecycle when the requirements are being explored, discovered, elicited and defined. The interplay between research and practice in IT which has been intrinsic to much of her work has given her considerable experience of the technical, socio-organisational and business aspects of real-world software and systems development.
She has inaugurated, organised and currently serves as the chair of the steering committee of the Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering (AWRE) and is the chair of the newly created national technical committee on Requirements Engineering of Australian Computer Society.
In 2001, Dr Zowghi established a Requirements Engineering Research group at UTS (RE@UTS - http://research.it.uts.edu.au/re/) comprising 16 staff and students and is currently the director of the RE research laboratory at the Faculty of Information Technology. She also serves as the co-director of COTAR (Centre for Object Technology and Application Research).
