Agile Elicitation of Scalability Requirements for Open Systems: A Case Study

TL;DR

This paper introduces the ScrumScale model, a lightweight spreadsheet artifact designed to facilitate the elicitation of scalability requirements in agile open systems development, demonstrated through a real open banking case study.

Contribution

The paper presents the ScrumScale model, a novel, simple artifact for eliciting scalability requirements in agile development, supported by design science research and a practical case study.

Findings

ScrumScale helped systematically produce scalability requirements.

Stakeholders found ScrumScale improved dialogue and understanding.

The model was effective in a real open banking case.

Abstract

Eliciting scalability requirements during agile software development is complicated and poorly described in previous research. This article presents a lightweight artifact for eliciting scalability requirements during agile software development: the ScrumScale model. The ScrumScale model is a simple spreadsheet. The scalability concepts underlying the ScrumScale model are clarified in this design science research, which also utilizes coordination theory. This paper describes the open banking case study, where a legacy banking system becomes open. This challenges the scalability of this legacy system. The first step in understanding this challenge is to elicit the new scalability requirements. In the open banking case study, key stakeholders from TietoEVRY spent 55 hours eliciting TietoEVRY's open banking project's scalability requirements. According to TietoEVRY, the ScrumScale model provided a systematic way of producing scalability requirements. For TietoEVRY, the scalability concepts behind the ScrumScale model also offered significant advantages in dialogues with other stakeholders.