Process Support for Requirements Engineering Activities in Global Software Development: A Literature Based Evaluation

Requirements Engineering (RE) is the first activity of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which plays a vital role in success or failure of any project. RE is difficult enough when done in collocated setting but the difficulty exacerbates when done in distributed settings due to of Global Software Development (GSD) inherent and induced problems which includes communication issues, strategic issues, cultural issues, knowledge management, technical issues and time zone difference. For this, a proper and well defined RE process model for GSD setting is required. This paper reports the GSD based RE process models found in literature. Further, on the basis of coverage of RE activities and GSD issues, an evaluation of these GSD based RE process models is done. Finally, the results of the evaluation are analyzed to highlight the gaps and deficiencies in the current GSD based RE process models and to emphasize the importance of the role of a well defined RE process model in GSD that covers majority if not all of the GSD issues.