Requirements Volatility in Software Architecture Design: An Exploratory Case Study

TL;DR

This paper explores how requirements volatility impacts software architecture design through an exploratory case study, identifying key factors, challenges, and mitigation strategies relevant to industry practitioners.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the relationship between requirements volatility and architecture design, highlighting specific challenges and mitigation approaches based on empirical data.

Findings

Requirements uncertainty and dynamic business environment cause volatility.

Volatility leads to scheduling issues and architectural technical debt.

Understanding these factors helps in mitigating architecture-related challenges.

Abstract

Requirements volatility is a major issue in software (SW) development, causing problems such as project delays and cost overruns. Even though there is a considerable amount of research related to requirement volatility, the majority of it is inclined toward project management aspects. The relationship between SW architecture design and requirements volatility has not been researched widely, even though changing requirements may for example lead to higher defect density during testing. An exploratory case study was conducted to study how requirements volatility affects SW architecture design. Fifteen semi-structured, thematic interviews were conducted in the case company, which provides the selection of software products for business customers and consumers. The research revealed the factors, such as requirements uncertainty and dynamic business environment, causing requirements volatility in the case company. The study identified the challenges that requirements volatility posed to SW architecture design, including scheduling and architectural technical debt. In addition, this study discusses means of mitigating the factors that cause requirements volatility and addressing the challenges posed by requirements volatility. SW architects are strongly influenced by requirement volatility. Thus understanding the factors causing requirements volatility as well as means to mitigate the challenges has high industrial relevance.