Requirements and design change in large-scale software development: analysis from the viewpoint of process backtracking

Change of requirements and design specifications is one of the fatal causes of large scale software development project problems. The authors study this problem from the viewpoint of software process backtracking. They conducted case studies of real business application system development projects. It was found that there were several cases of process backtracking in large scale projects and the process model should be flexible to allow reversibility. The users learning processes are considered. Among many probable factors that cause the volatility of user requirements and thus result in process backtracking, specific attention is given to the fact that as users learn to use a system and accumulate experience of the system usage, they change their system requirements level. The importance of considering this evolution process and finding a way of predicting changes in user requirements are discussed