A Multi-dimensional Study of Requirements Changes in Agile Software Development Projects

Agile processes are now widely practiced by software engineering (SE) teams, and the agile manifesto claims that agile methods support responding to changes well. However, no study appears to have researched whether this is accurate in reality. Requirements changes (RCs) are inevitable in any software development environment, and we wanted to acquire a holistic picture of how RCs occur and are handled in agile SE teams in practice. We also wanted to know whether responding to changes is the only or a main reason for software teams to use agile in their projects. To do this we conducted a mixed-methods research study which comprised of interviews of 10 agile practitioners from New Zealand and Australia, a literature review, and an in-depth survey with the participation of 40 agile practitioners world-wide. Through this study we identified different types of RCs, their origination including reasons for origination, forms, sources, carriers, and events at which they originate, challenging nature, and finally whether agile helps to respond to changes or not. We also found that agile teams seem to be reluctant to accept RCs, and therefore, they use several mitigation strategies. Additionally, as they accept the RCs, they use a variety of techniques to handle them. Furthermore, we found that agile allowing better response to RCs is only a minor reason for practicing agile. Several more important reasons included being able to deliver the product in a shorter period and increasing team productivity. Practitioners stated this improves the agile team environment and thus are the real motivators for teams to practice agile. Finally, we provide a set of practical recommendations that can be used to better handle RCs effectively in agile software development environments.