An agile solution to address communication challenges during software development requirements engineering

Abstract

Action Design Research (ADR) continues to evolve to meet the demands of new and challenging environments due to ever-expanding applications. In this study, we gradually assemble multiple artefacts by using ADR. The diagnosis stage was the initial point of entry at a medium-sized enterprise in South Africa in the geographical information system (GIS) industry, referred to as Company-GIS or CGIS in this study. The researcher in collaboration with CGIS practitioners determined that inadequate communication while executing software development projects causes project tasks to take longer than expected, negatively impacting on-time delivery, quality of delivery, and delivery within budget. After conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) to determine whether communication problems exist as a class-of-problems in software development projects, the researcher determined that the root-cause identified, i.e., inadequate communication, was too vague and thus a rudimentary taxonomy of perceived communication problems at CGIS was created. The main communication problems identified in the requirement elicitation/analysis phase at CGIS are requirements that can’t be defined and/or translated, and misalignment between stakeholders. In the 15th State of Agile report, the most important reasons for adopting Agile within a team or organisation was to enhance the ability to manage changing priorities, accelerate software delivery, increase team productivity, and improve business and IT alignment. According to a 2020 survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, the COVID-19 crisis is a tipping point for technology adoption or digital disruption. Understanding which technologies to apply and how to manage change at a pace that far exceeds that of prior experiences, is critical going forward since the pace of change is not likely to slow down anytime soon. Considering that CGIS does not adhere to an Agile framework, and only incorporates some Agile practices, an experimentation opportunity existed. This study answers the following primary research question: What adaption of an Agile RE solution (or a subset of its associated mechanisms) could address a subset of classified communication challenges in software development companies (such as CGIS) to improve the information flow/communication between stakeholders during RE in order to assist management in reducing the misalignment between project stakeholders and/or the negative impact on project delivery? In collaboration with CGIS practitioners, the ADR design stage was initiated. The researcher created a proposed Agile solution which included Scrum to incrementally and frequently deliver software and therefore validate customer requirements, as well as the Requirements Specification for Developer (RSD) approach to document the requirements. The proposed solution was presented to CGIS practitioners and collaboratively modified. The ADR implementation stage followed, during which the adapted Agile RE solution (ARES) was implemented and evaluated. Two sprints of one week each were evaluated and included in this study and it was determined that the ARES increased effective communication between stakeholders during RE at CGIS. Challenges were identified, including documentation and testing concerns as well as the idea of scaling the solution within CGIS. Recommendations for future research include validating the taxonomy presented, documenting the learnings obtained from the ADR methodology to showcase its usefulness, and incorporating DevOps into the ARES as part of the evolution stage of the ARES.