A Reference Model for the Selection of Open Source Tools for Requirements Management

The aim of this study is to build a reference model for the selection of Open Source tools for the management of customer requirements in IT projects. The construction of the reference model results from the needs of companies producing software which are also interested in streamlining the process of managing requirements using Open Source tools. This interest in Open Source tools is, in turn, a consequence of licensing costs, integration with the rest of the portfolio, and support costs. The advantage of Open Source tools is their low license cost and the ease of their adaptation, provided that there is access to a reference model for their adaptation. The problem of the IT market is the lack of such reference models for selecting Open Source tools. Therefore, the authors undertook to build such a model and to apply it in supporting the requirements development process in IT projects. To achieve the objective, the study was divided into four main parts. The first elaborates on the issue of selecting tools in the software development cycle, indicating the need for departments creating IT systems to use appropriate tools for the given organization. The second part is devoted to the approach to the selection of tools supporting the requirements development process. The purpose of this section is to diagnose the state of IT projects and the lack of support for the requirements development process. The third (the main) part presents the idea to construct a reference model for the selection of tools to support the requirements development process. The structure and development prospects of the model are also discussed here. The fourth part is entirely devoted to examples of the application of the reference model in several IT projects.