Association between Requirement Engineering Processes and Risk Management

Association between Requirement Engineering Processes and Risk Management Rajinder Singh Department of Electronics, S.D College, Ambala Cantt, Haryana, India ___________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: The software industry has shown ballooning growth rate in last few years but still it is over burdened with failed and delayed projects. Most of these failed projects overrun their original budget. As per a report presented by The Standish Group, 72 percent of software projects are failed as those are completed after scheduled time and are over budget. More than 23 percent of software projects are cancelled before they ever get completed, and 49 percent of projects cost 145 percent of their original estimates. (Standish, 1995). In retrospection, many of these companies reported that their problems could have been avoided or drastically reduced if high-risk elements of the project could have been identified in advance. Although there are many risks involved in software development life cycle but the major risks are related to software cost, quality and scheduling which can be controlled and avoided if proper strategies are adopted in the initial stages. Risk management helps us to identify, analyze and control various risks associated with software development cycle. Theories say, all of these risks crepes in due to poor requirement engineering processes followed by software development team. Lack of understanding of client’s requirements, frequent changes in requirements, lack of user involvement. Lack of standards for requirement elicitation methods are some of the factors which leads to delayed, over budget and low quality software projects. If requirement engineering processes are followed by companies, risks can be managed properly. So requirement engineering processes and risk management are corelated and go side by side. The aim of this study is to check how much RE processes affects risk management by conducting a survey in nine different software development companies and taking evidence from the software developers who are actually using these practices practically in their jobs.