Trust and co-operation in system development: applying responsibility modelling to the problem of changing requirements

Although some progress has been made in recent years towards developing more effective methods for eliciting and representing requirements for software systems, little progress has been made towards developing tools and techniques that address the impact of changing requirements or of proposing changes to the a priori processes and structures for requirements analysis that dominate current systems development practice. The paper presents some of the interim results from PROTEUS, a DTI Project looking at requirements change practice in British industry, with a particular emphasis on safety related system developments. Two sets of case study results, one drawn from collaboration with an industrial partner and the other looking at requirements handling experiences in a range of companies, present a disturbing picture of the state of requirements change practice. The results point to predominantly social, rather than technical, problems primarily in the professional relationships between client and developer on software development projects. The paper concludes by arguing that contractual relationships on fixed cost projects, the lack of trust between partners, and the overwhelming level of software control required to handle change all marginalise the opportunity to create efficient software systems