Concepts for Incremental Method Evolution: Empirical Exploration and Validation in Requirements Management

Product software companies are confronted with performance failures in their processes for which standard theories on situational method engineering need to be revisited. By developing a knowledge infrastructure, we support these companies with their method evolution by increasing the maturity of their processes incrementally. We first identify and formalize general method increments that are found in an exploratory case study. Then, we formalize common process needs, by developing a root-cause map for software product management and by identifying the root causes and process alternatives that are related to them. We validate the formalized method increments, and process needs by applying them to an extensive case study conducted at Infor Global Solutions. The results show that the formalized method increment types cover all increments that were found in the exploratory case study, and that the rootcause map is a useful technique to model the root causes encountered in product software companies.