Business Risk Analysis: Obsolescence Management in Requirements Engineering

2. Problem Statement

Meeting business needs, client requirements, or business requirements is the focal objective of any software project, however a significant number of projects fail to meet those requirements. The three main visible causes are summarized to be a change in budget, time, and/or scope of the project (Schwalbe, 2006) .The importance of assessing the cause has actually to do with a deeper analysis of the failure. Software systems can become highly complex to build and developing complex systems must start with the right approach. The foremost step in undertaking a big IT venture is to account for obsolete requirements during the planning, analysis, and requirements elicitation phase so that a reduction if not total elimination of both financial as well as technical risks can be attained. If obsolete requirements are identified and addressed in the initial phases of the project, they will become less costly and more manageable in the later phases. The problem statement of this research project as a result of the above discussion is to understand what obsolescence is and how it can originate in context to IT projects. Data collected as part of this research will assist the investigation of requirements obsolescence in answering what, how, when, and why requirements become obsolete and the relevancy to the size of projects, project management methodologies implemented or otherwise, strength of audit controls and compliances and communication amongst project team members and stakeholders, to name a few.