Requirements Engineering Tools for Global Software Engineering - A Feature Analysis Study
Somnoup Yos, Caslon Chua · 2018
Demand in Global Software Engineering (GSE) is increasing every year. While GSE reduces development cost and provides access to resources poll, GSE practitioners also need to deal with many challenges. This impacts Requirements Engineering (RE) process in term of teamwork, collaboration, knowledge management, time and cultural differences. Providing that RE is considered to be an important part of the software development, several studies have pointed out the need of RE process that supports GSE environment. We recognize the importance of RE tools in supporting RE process and conduct the study to discover the best way to use RE tools to solve the challenges in GSE. The study adopts the Feature Analysis Screening Mode approach and generates the list of features with four categories that could address the challenges: (1) Shared Knowledge Management, (2) Workflow and Change Management, (3) Traceability, and (4) System and Data Integration. Four RE tools on the market are selected for inv estigation. We have found out how the tools best support three of the categories but have limited capability for the first category. Some suggestions are provided for the future development to provide the support for RE work in GSE environment.