Success factors influencing requirements change management process in global software development

Planning and managing requirements changes in Global Software Development (GSD) is a challenging task. While requirements change has received much attention from researchers, Requirements Change Management (RCM) process is still an emerging area in GSD. The objective of this paper is to identify the success factors of RCM in the GSD environment. We applied the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach and identified 23 success factors that influence RCM in GSD projects. The findings of the SLR indicate that change impact analysis, change understanding, management support, RCM process awareness, standard for RCM, progress measure, updated requirements and minimize project failure risk are key factors that influence RCM in a GSD project. We present a comparison of success factors identified in client and vendor organizations. Moreover, we present a framework to classify the identified success factors for RCM process implementation. We believe GSD organizations can use the framework to better manage requirements change in GSD projects.