Impact minimization of requirements change in software project through requirements classification

Abstract

One of many reasons of software project failure is requirement changes. Different requirement changes come up during different phases of software development. Managing these changes throughout the software life cycle especially at later development phases is a challenging task. Mismanaged requirement changes can also lead to failure of the project. In this paper we present a model in which requirements will be divided in to three different categories; fixed, less likely to change, and most likely to change. All requirements which have no chance of change come under fixed category. Requirements having less chances of change will come under less likely to change category and requirements having great chances of change will come under most likely to change category. Modularization is based on category of the requirements. As a result, requirement changes are properly managed while few resources are used for incorporating the requirement changes and project failure chances are mitigated.