Concerns in Software Development: A Systematic Mapping Study

TL;DR

This systematic mapping study reviews how stakeholder concerns are addressed throughout the software development life cycle, highlighting terminological variations and the importance of systematic approaches for critical systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of research on addressing concerns across all phases of the software development life cycle, emphasizing the need for systematic methods.

Findings

Significant variation in terminologies used for concerns.

Concerns are addressed differently across development phases.

Systematic approaches are increasingly recognized as important.

Abstract

Context: Successfully addressing stakeholder concerns that are related to software system development and operation is crucial to achieving development goals. The importance of using a systematic approach to addressing these concerns throughout the software development life cycle is growing as more and more systems are employed to handle critical tasks. Objective: The goal of this study is to provide an overview of addressing concerns across the software development life cycle. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted using a pre-defined protocol. Four digital databases were searched for research literature and primary studies were selected after a three round selection process conducted by multiple researchers. Results: The extracted data are processed and the results are reported from different viewpoints. The results are also analyzed against our research goals. Conclusion: We show that there is a considerable variation in the use of terminologies and addressing concerns in different phases of the software development life cycle.