Det problemområde som behandlas i arbetet är den del av systemutvecklarens arbete avsett att hantera förändringar i kravbilden under systemutvecklingens hela livscykel, kallat Requirements Management (RM). Arbetet fokuseras på detaljer kring spårbarhet inom förändringshantering. För att lyckas i spårbarhetsarbetet gäller det för systemutvecklaren att se hur de olika krav som finns i kravbilden är relaterade till varandra och var kraven har sitt ursprung. Det skiljs inom spårbarhetsområdet mellan framåt- och bakåtriktad spårbarhet. Vardera spårbarhetsriktningen delas sedan in i två steg från kravursprung framåt via kravdokumentation till realisering då det gäller den framåtriktade och från realisering via kravdokumentation till kravursprung då det gäller den bakåtriktade. En studie har genomförts där litteraturens syn har jämförts med ett antal respondenters då det gäller att dels kartlägga vilka typer av spårbarhet som behövs inom systemutvecklingsprojekt och dels vilket stöd som behövs för att etablera och underhålla denna spårbarhet.

Det är idag fortfarande en stor del av alla IT-projekt som misslyckas och kravhanteringen har fått en större betydelse för om ett IT-projekt ska lyckas eller inte. För att en större möjlighet till att ett IT-projekt ska lyckas används kravinsamlingsmetoder, dock är det viktigt att rätt kravinsamlingsmetod väljs till det specifika projektet. Om fel kravinsamlingsmetod väljs från början kan detta ledda till en misslyckad systemimplementation. Därför har författaren av rapporten valt följande huvudproblemfråga att undersöka i denna uppsats: Vilka råd rörande metodval kan ges till organisationer som ska implementera och välja en kravinsamlingsmetod? Med hjälp av enkäter och djupare intervjuer har författaren samlat in tillräckligt med material för att spegla de svar som framkommit i slutet av rapporten. Undersökningen ledde till att författaren skapade en ram som speglade ett antal punkter som är viktiga att tänka på vid valet av kravinsamlingsmetod.

In this thesis, we tried to solve those problems by adapting agile development methods with Non-functional requirements-framework (NFR-Framework). In this thesis, we have inspected many research papers, and we have met industrial experts for feedback regarding our theoretical results. As a result of the inspection, we have been able to adapt agile development methods (extreme programming (XP)) with NFR-framework. We use XP since it is more practically oriented process than other agile development methods. In the first try for this process model, we got three alternatives for applying it. The first one is based on collecting all NFRs from the beginning of the development process. The second one is based on updating the SIG (software interdependency graph) every time we have new functional requirements (FR) and the third one is based on the incremental nature of agile development methods. Each one of these alternatives has it is own advantages and disadvantages. We tried to extract those advantages and disadvantages by brainstorming and reading research papers. The most important issue in all of the three alternatives is the applicability. Finally we got industrial feedback regarding all of them. As a result of the industrial feedback, we were able to find another alternative of how to apply the process model which is presented in 7.2.

Context-aware computing envisions a new generation of smart applications that have the ability to perpetually sense the user’s context and use these data to make adaptation decision in response to changes in the user’s context so as to provide timely and personalized services anytime and anywhere. Unlike the traditional distribution systems where the network topology is fixed and wired, context-aware computing systems are mostly based on wireless communication due to the mobility of the network nodes; hence the network topology is not fixed but changes dynamically in an unpredictable manner as nodes join and the leave network, in addition to the fact that wireless communication is unstable. These factors make the design and development of context-aware computing systems much more challenging, as the system requirements change depending on the context of use. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is a graphical language commonly used to specify, visualize, construct, and document the artefacts of software-intensive systems. However, UML is an all-purpose modelling language and does not have notations to distinguish context-awareness requirements from other system requirements. This is critical for the specification, visualization, construction and documentation of context-aware computing systems because context-awareness requirements are highly important in these systems. This thesis proposes an extension of UML diagrams to cater for the specification, visualization, construction and documentation of context-aware computing systems where new notations are introduced to model context-awareness requirements distinctively from other system requirements. The contributions of this work can be summarized as follows: (i) A context-aware use case diagram is a new notion which merges into a single diagram the traditional use case diagram (that describes the functions of an application) and the use context diagram, which specifies the context information upon which the behaviours of these functions depend. (ii) A Novel notion known as a context-aware activity diagram is presented, which extends the traditional UML activity diagrams to enable the representation of context objects, context constraints and adaptation activities. Context constraints express conditions upon context object attributes that trigger adaptation activities; adaptation activities are activities that must be performed in response to specific changes in the system’s context. (iii) A novel notion known as the context-aware class diagram is presented, which extends the traditional UML class diagrams to enable the representation of context information that affect the behaviours of a class. A new relationship, called utilisation, between a UML class and a context class is used to model context objects; meaning that the behaviours of the UML class depend upon the context information represented by the context class. Hence a context-aware class diagram is a rich and expressive language that distinctively depicts both the structure of classes and that of the contexts upon which they depend. The pragmatics of the proposed approach are demonstrated using two real-world case studies.

Context: Requirements engineering (RE) and Verification and validation (V&V) areas are treated to be integrated and assure successful development of the software project. Therefore, activation of both competences in the early stages of the project will support products in meeting the customer expectation regarding the quality and functionality. However, this quality can be achieved by aligning RE and V&V. There are different practices such as requirements, verification, validation, control, tool etc. that are followed by organizations for alignment and to address different challenges faced during the alignment between RE and V&V. However, there is a requisite for studies to understand the alignment practices, challenges and factors, which can enable successful alignment between RE and V&V. Objectives: In this study, an exploratory investigation is carried out to know the impact of factors i.e. RE process and organizational factors during the alignment between RE and V&V. The main objectives of this study are: To find the list of RE practices that facilitate alignment between RE and V&V. To categorize RE practices with respect to their requirement phases. To find the list of RE process and organizational factors that influence alignment between RE and V&V besides their impact. To identify the challenges that are faced during the alignment between RE and V&V. To obtain list of challenges that are addressed by RE practices during the alignment between RE and V&V. Methods: In this study Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is conducted using snowballing procedure to identify the relevant information about RE practices, challenges, RE process factors and organizational factors. The studies were captured from Engineering Village database. Rigor and relevance analysis is performed to assess the quality of the studies obtained through SLR. Further, a questionnaire intended for industrial survey was prepared from the gathered literature and distributed to practitioners from the software industry in order to collect empirical information about this study. Thereafter, data obtained from industrial survey was analyzed using statistical analysis and chi-square significance test. Results: 20 studies were identified through SLR, which are relevant to this study. After analyzing the obtained studies, the list of RE process factors, organizational factors, challenges and RE practices during alignment between RE and V&V are gathered. Thereupon, an industrial survey is conducted from the obtained literature, which has obtained 48 responses. Alignment between RE and V&V possess an impact of RE process factors and organizational factors and this is also mentioned by the respondents of the survey. Moreover, this study finds an additional RE process factors and organizational factors during the alignment between RE and V&V, besides their impact. Another contribution is, addressing the unaddressed challenges by RE practices obtained through the literature. Additionally, validation of categorized RE practices with respect to their requirement phases is carried out. Conclusions: To conclude, the obtained results from this study will benefit practitioners for capturing more insight towards the alignment between RE and V&V. This study identified the impact of RE process factors and organizational factors during the alignment between RE and V&V along with the importance of challenges faced during the alignment between RE and V&V. This study also addressed the unaddressed challenges by RE practices obtained through literature. Respondents of the survey believe that many RE process and organizational factors have negative impact on the alignment between RE and V&V based on the size of an organization. In addition to this, validation of results for applying RE practices at different requirement phases is toted through survey. Practitioners can identify the benefits from this research and researchers can extend this study to remaining alignment practices.

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a crucial part of any product management and product development activity, and as such deficiencies in the RE process may have severe consequences. There are reports from industry that point towards inadequate requirements being one of the leading sources for project failure. Software Process Improvement (SPI) is generally seen as the main tool to address process deficiencies in general and within RE. Assessments lead to establishing plans for improvements that are subsequently implemented and evaluated, and then the SPI cycle starts again, in an optimal case being incremental and continuous. Most well known SPI frameworks, e.g. CMM, CMMI, SPICE and QIP, are based on these general principles. There are however several factors that can have a negative impact on SPI efforts in general, and in the case of SPI targeted at RE in particular. Time and cost are two fundamental factors that can effectively “raise the bar” for SPI efforts being initiated at all. This is the particular case for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources, and a limited ability to wait for the return on their investment. Other issues include commitment and involvement in the SPI work by the ones affected by the changes, coverage of the RE area in SPI frameworks, and the ability to focus improvements to areas where they are needed the most. The research presented in this thesis is based on actual needs identified in industry, and all of the proposed solutions have also been validated in industry to address issues of applicability and usability. In general, the goal of the research is to “lower the bar”, i.e. enabling SMEs to initiate and perform SPI activities. It is accomplished through the presentation and validation of two assessment methods that targets RE, one aimed at both fast and low-cost benchmarking of current practices, and the other designed to produce tangible improvement proposals that can be used as input to an improvement activity, i.e. producing a relatively accurate assessment but taking limited time and resources into account. Further, to offer a structured way in which SMEs can focus their SPI efforts, a framework is introduced that can be used to package improvement proposals with regards to their relative priority taking dependencies into account. This enables SMEs to choose what to do first based on their needs, as well as a way to control time to return on their investment by controlling the size of the undertaking. As a result of industry validation of the assessment method and packaging framework, several improvement proposals were identified and prioritized/packaged. As a part of a process improvement effort (based on an improvement proposal package) an RE model was developed that was appropriate for SMEs faced with a market-driven product centered development situation. The model, called Requirements Abstraction Model (RAM), addresses the structuring and specification of requirements. The main feature of the model is that it not only offers a structured way in which requirements can be specified, but it also takes a requirement’s abstraction level into account, using abstraction for the work-up instead of putting all requirements in one repository independent of abstraction level. The RAM was developed to support primarily the product management effort, recognizing that RE from this perspective is not project initiated but rather project initiating. The model assists product managers to take requirements on varying abstraction levels and refining them to the point of being good-enough to offer decision support for management, and at the same time being good-enough for project initiation. The main contribution of the thesis is to present SMEs with “tools” that help them commit to and perform SPI activities. Moreover, the thesis introduces the RAM model that was developed based on needs identified in industry, and subsequently piloted in industry to assure usability.

Change is unavoidable in software development. During the entire lifecycle of a product, from concept to retirement, the environment changes; the needs of customers or the market change and grow, and with them the requirements on the system being developed. Under these conditions, it is crucial to have strong change control in order to be able to manage change in an orderly fashion. Unmanaged change may lead to fault-prone software, thereby increasing test, support and maintenance costs. Impact analysis is the activity of analysing a change and assessing the consequences it may have, including necessary modifications to development artefacts. Thus, it serves as a very important change control tool. Furthermore, as the consequences may include aspects of time, resources, market and technology, impact analysis has the potential to be a valuable product and project management tool. To this date, impact analysis research has mainly been conducted in the software maintenance field. However, as impact analysis clearly has a wide field of application, it is relevant to study it in other contexts as well. This thesis looks at impact analysis from a requirements engineering perspective, with particular focus on organisational aspects related to different roles and organisational levels. The results show that impact analysis indeed has a diverse nature with respect to these aspects. Furthermore, the thesis includes the proposal and evaluation of a semi-automatic method for performing impact analysis. Finally, it provides a thorough evaluation of a technique for reconstructing missing data in surveys. / Avhandlingen handlar om påverkansanalys av programvaruändringar under utvecklingscykeln. Påverkansanalys diskuteras från ett organisatoriskt perspektiv med fokus på kravhantering. Detta skiljer sig från majoriteten av existerande forskning, där man typiskt har ett tekniskt perspektiv samt fokuserar på programvaruunderhåll. Nyckelord: påverkansanalys, roller, organisatoriska nivåer, kravhantering

Research findings in requirements engineering (RE) report that software organizations still struggle in establishing processes that lead to proper requirements handling. This leads to the acknowledgement that the adoption of good requirements engineering practices by industry is still not common. Although some initiatives have been made to spread the use of good practices of bespoke RE, the area of market-driven requirements engineering (MDRE) still lacks a contribution in that direction. MDRE is characterized by strong market and strategic orientation, which contrasts with the customer/development organization relationship of bespoke RE. This poses several challenges to software product organizations, such as the need for aligning development activities with organizational and product strategies. In an attempt to help these organizations to realize the benefits of MDRE, this Master Thesis presents the Market-Driven Requirements Engineering Process Model (MDREPM). MDREPM is both a collection of good practices in MDRE, and an assessment tool for organizations to get a snapshot of the current state of their MDRE practices. The assessment intends to reveal problem areas of organization’s requirements process, which can then be worked upon by introducing good practices described in the model. The thesis describes the motivation for creating MDREPM, both from an academia and industry perspectives. In addition, it describes the process of developing the model, from its creation through to its validation within academia and industry. As the series of three case studies conducted indicate, the MDREPM has been shown to be useful for industry practitioners. A unanimous opinion has been found as to the good coverage it provides of issues related to MDRE, and as to its usefulness for driving improvement efforts in requirements engineering.

Abstract The information and communication technology (ICT) industry has expanded rapidly during the past decades and has changed in terms of frequent technology development, increase in product complexity, constant time-to-market pressures, heavy price erosion and the decrease in physical dimensions. Successful product development thus requires effective requirements engineering and acknowledging the different needs of internal and external stakeholders. A vital challenge for ICT companies is requirements for products typically changing during product development. In addition, requirements are not interpreted the same way in different parts of organisations. Today’s products being more complicated than ever, and customer segments more fragmented, requirements engineering and testing is currently a bottleneck for product development and production. In this dissertation, requirements engineering in ICT companies is studied from four complementary viewpoints – current challenges, manufacturing requirements, external requirements, and optimal acceptance limits in manufacturing. The dissertation is qualitative and inductive in nature and is based on interviewing experienced industrial managers. The study included also an element that can be seen as constructive. The researcher has analysed the obtained material and made conclusions. The main result of this dissertation can be summarised as requirements engineering having a coordinating role in complex ICT product development. In addition, this study highlights the potential of the design for excellence (DfX) concept for addressing a vast amount of requirements from numerous internal and external stakeholders. ICT companies should consider full integration of tools and databases related to requirements. Also, delaying decision-making in product development projects to a stage, where adequate amount of information is available, could help coping with changing requirements. Addressing the challenges of a large and complex organisation requires creating and documenting processes for a vast amount of issues. It may be sensible to consider the benefits of establishing a separate DfX management organisation for coordinating internal and external requirements. In addition, the managers in ICT companies should notice that in contrast to the conventional thinking, widening the manufacturing acceptance limits makes business sense in some cases.

Business-IT alignment has been a top research topic for three decades now and consistently ranks high on CIO priorities and concerns. In spite of its seeming advantages, sustainable business-IT alignment remains elusive in practice. This can be attributed to the language and knowledge gaps which impede mutual understanding between business and IT stakeholders. It can also be attributed to the limitations imposed by approaching alignment solely from a strategic perspective. This thesis argues for an ontology-based framework that bridges the language and knowledge gaps through closer interaction between business and IT stakeholders throughout the software development and project management lifecycles, especially at the requirements engineering stage. Attempts at achieving sustainable business-IT alignment predominantly focus on strategic alignment and have not been successful for various reasons. Firstly, driving down alignment initiatives to the operational and tactical levels is challenging. Secondly, it is difficult to operationalize the metrics used for evaluating alignment maturity at strategic levels. These limitations are less pronounced at the functional levels of an organization. It is at these levels that business strategies are executed and interaction between business and IT personnel is most frequent. The interaction between business and IT stakeholders in the execution of IT projects presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to drive alignment maturity. The proposed framework is discussed in terms of its underpinning hypotheses, workflows, tool design and implementation, its use with a third party framework and tool. Antecedents to operational and tactical alignment such as quality, reuse, communication, learning, and shared understanding, are proposed as a practical means of achieving sustainable alignment maturity. The framework is applied to real world, business-critical projects in a top global financial services organization and validated using descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation modelling techniques. Contributions made through the study are highlighted. This includes the Alignment Forces Model which unifies the proposed framework and its support tool within software development and project management lifecycles. The Alignment Forces model and how it can be applied in practice is presented. Results of the quantitative data analyses indicate support for the arguments for the framework towards improving business-IT alignment, however with some limitations. Results also indicate support for the hypotheses for the antecedents to sustainable alignment maturity at lower organizational levels put forward. Finally, suggestions on furthering the study, addressing its limitations, and refining the framework and tool are articulated.