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requirements engineering activities and thus cause
additional changes. In our opinion they in fact are
able to cope with changes reasonably well, so theirs is
a valid approach. However they rely on two very
critical points. On the one hand their success is
dependent on their ability to effectively involve the
stakeholders throughout the project, which isn’t
always possible. On the other hand they rely on
changes not getting too costly. Changes that have
great impact on the system can be very costly and can
prove to be critical for the project, as is shown by
Boehm (1981).
We suggest differentiating between different
types of requirements, rating them according to their
probability to change and their impact on the system.
We think it would be advantageous for agile
methods to follow a higher ceremony traditional
requirements approach for requirements that are not
likely to change and those who have great impact on
the system while following their lightweight
approach for other requirements. However this is
just an assumption and remains to be proven
empirically.
One still has to remember that another project
characteristic that is often found in an agile
environment is strong time constraints. The effort
invested in requirements activities has to be
balanced with their benefit. Though, if some changes
in requirements can effectively be prevented by a
little effort early in the project it may well be worth
it.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Our aim in this paper was to show whether and how
agile methods deal with requirements related issues
in a change intensive environment. We showed that
agile methods provide a valid approach but we also
identified several weaknesses. Our work gives an
overview over the problems agile methods have
concerning requirements and can serve as a basis for
further discussion. However we performed our
analysis only qualitatively. Studies based on
empirical data are necessary to solidify our findings.
Furthermore, solutions for the identified problems
need to be found and empirically evaluated.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the German
ministry of education and research (BMBF) within
the project “Interorganisationale Softwareentwicklung
unter dem Aspekt der Wandlungsfähigkeit und der
Wiederverwendung” (IOSE-W
2
), grant no. 01/SF 03.
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