On the facets of stakeholder inertia: A literature review

Intense competition in rapidly changing markets puts intense pressure on product definition and the associated requirements engineering processes. An extensive literature review has identified that brand inertia, customer inertia, inappropriate market entry strategies and an inability to satisfy customer needs or expectations are the principle contributors to customer product rejection. While RE practice has developed a number of methodologies for addressing aspects of the contributing factors to these failures, very little prior work has focused on the inertia aspects of the problem. In this work we present the results of our literature review and build upon this review to develop an initial framework for incorporating stakeholder inertia into RE practice and management processes. We conclude with a detailed agenda for further research into aspects of the stakeholder inertia problem.