Managing Uncertainty in Requirements: A Survey in Documentation-Driven and Agile Companies

Abstract

This paper investigates commonalities and differences between agile and documentation-driven approaches in managing uncertainty in requirement gathering. The research method is a survey collected interviewing sixteen project managers of Italian software companies, 8 using agile methods, and 8 using documentation-driven methods. The results show that agile and document-driven companies consider in a different way the problem of changing requirements and the related uncertainty; thus, they manage differently requirements gathering and the relationship with the customer