Requirements Change Management Challenges of Global Software Development: An Empirical Investigation

The software organizations rapidly adopting global software development (GSD) to gain the economic and strategic benefits. Besides, GSD faces many challenges that mainly concerned with the requirements change management (RCM). This study aims to identify and empirically validate the factors that can negatively influence the RCM process in GSD. To this end, literature review and questionnaire survey were conducted for the investigation and validation of RCM challenges. A total of 31 RCM challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in organization types, organization size and based on experts' opinions with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges to the practitioners. Based on these identified challenges, we believe that this study can provide a framework for tackling problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to success and progression of GSD organizations.