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Title AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ABOUT POSITIVE IMPLICATIONS OF REQUIREMENTS VOLATILITY ON THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

Author(s) SUMAIRA ANWAR BAIG

Abstract Requirement volatility is a fundamental activity that occurs throughout the software development life cycle. But, nowadays, it is becoming a striking reason for software project failures, such as software defects and resource management issues, especially in the context of the software architecture. A software architecture that indicates the complete vision of the upcoming system is one of the major areas that could be adversely affected by the requirements volatility. This phenomenon indicated the close connection and equal worth of both these twin peaks of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) i.e. ‘requirement volatility’ and ‘software architecture’. Moreover, modern software development models are fragile, wherein, the software architectures must be designed flexibly to accommodate future changes. However, the fragile nature of requirement volatility indicated their positive activity, and nor does it means an uncontrolled state of existence. Nevertheless, it is a challenging activity but it could be achieved through sound knowledge. For implementation, this study adopted a systematic literature review to identify the list of factors related to the software architecture which are also validated by the experts of the domain. In the end, an industrial survey was conducted to propose the positive implications of identified factors on software architecture. Accordingly, this study contributed a refined and validated list of 27 factors along with their positive implications. Moreover, this study revealed that communication issues and dependencies are the main factors that are causing requirement volatility and factors related to architecture i.e. traceability, design implementations, documentation, and architectural complexity having major implications on the software architecture. Accordingly, to better assist in the development process, the practitioners or developers must have to consider these factors to deal with the upcoming changes more, effectively.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Engineering and Computer Science

Department Engineering

Language English

Publication Date 2022-10-20

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