Effective requirements management in preparation for large software projects
Metso, Lasse (2024)
2024
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024061022689
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024061022689
Tiivistelmä
Competition in the rapidly digitalizing world has increased the strategic importance and mission criticality of software in organizations’ success. Implementing software successfully requires almost always an information technology project together with strong project execution capabilities. In 2012, advisory firm Gartner concluded that only 16,2% of large software projects were considered fully successful, whereas 31% have been declared complete failures. Even though information technology has advanced significantly since 2012, the success rates of large software projects have improved only minimally.
The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the most important factors in requirements elicitation and management process in project preparation phase for increasing the probability of a successful outcome of a large software project. The first research problem is to identify through existing theory the most important quality criteria for requirements expressions in large software project preparation. The second research problem is to empirically study the impact of the identified requirements quality criteria on the success of large software projects. The theoretical framework in this study is a synthesis of the existing scientific research and other literature on the effective requirements elicitation and management process and requirements quality criteria, and on their impact to projects’ success.
The empirical part of this study was executed as qualitative multiple-case study. The research data was collected by interviewing eight experienced information technology professionals with semi-structured interview method. Individual case descriptions together with their key findings were first written from each research case, and the findings were then compared to each other and synthesized through a crosscase analysis.
The empirical research showed that the way requirements are elicited and managed when preparing for software projects has an impact on the project outcome. Organizations should invest enough time to identify and analyse the real business needs behind project initiatives to ensure the initial relevance of the subsequent requirements. Business requirements should be first derived to answer how the project itself helps to fulfil the business needs, and all the following user and software requirements should be based on and mapped to them. Understanding how the users currently work and why is very important, but users should not be tasked to write requirements bottom up. Instead, the business transformation goals should be embedded into all requirements.
The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the most important factors in requirements elicitation and management process in project preparation phase for increasing the probability of a successful outcome of a large software project. The first research problem is to identify through existing theory the most important quality criteria for requirements expressions in large software project preparation. The second research problem is to empirically study the impact of the identified requirements quality criteria on the success of large software projects. The theoretical framework in this study is a synthesis of the existing scientific research and other literature on the effective requirements elicitation and management process and requirements quality criteria, and on their impact to projects’ success.
The empirical part of this study was executed as qualitative multiple-case study. The research data was collected by interviewing eight experienced information technology professionals with semi-structured interview method. Individual case descriptions together with their key findings were first written from each research case, and the findings were then compared to each other and synthesized through a crosscase analysis.
The empirical research showed that the way requirements are elicited and managed when preparing for software projects has an impact on the project outcome. Organizations should invest enough time to identify and analyse the real business needs behind project initiatives to ensure the initial relevance of the subsequent requirements. Business requirements should be first derived to answer how the project itself helps to fulfil the business needs, and all the following user and software requirements should be based on and mapped to them. Understanding how the users currently work and why is very important, but users should not be tasked to write requirements bottom up. Instead, the business transformation goals should be embedded into all requirements.