Requirements Engineering Tools for Global Software Engineering A Feature Analysis Study

The demand in Global Software Engineering (GSE) is increasing every year. GSE helps the software development industry reduce development cost and provide access to resources pool; however, GSE practitioners also need to deal with numerous challenges. This impacts Requirements Engineering (RE) process in terms of teamwork, collaboration, knowledge management, time and cultural differences. RE is considered to be one of the important processes in the software development, and several studies have pointed out the need of a new RE process that supports GSE environment. We acknowledged the importance of RE tools in supporting RE process and conducted a study to discover the best way to use RE tools to solve the challenges in GSE. The study used the Feature Analysis Screening Mode approach and generated a list of features with four categories that would address these challenges, namely: (1) Shared Knowledge Management, (2) Workflow and Change Management, (3) Traceability, and (4) System and Data Integration. Four RE tools on the market are selected for investigation. We found out how these tools best support three of the categories, but have limited capability for the first category. Some suggestions were given for future development to provide the support for RE process in GSE environment.