A dashboard-based approach for efficient requirements change management

Requirements gathering and documentation are important first steps for a successful software engineering project. The documented requirements act as a guideline for design and development of software products. Requirements also represent customer expectations for the end product. Since these documented requirements serve important purposes for many stakeholders, managing requirement changes effectively plays a major role in the overall success of any project. Changes in requirements are very common in software engineering and can occur during any phase of software development lifecycle (SDLC). Though the impact of requirement changes differs depending on the SDLC phase in which it occurred, there is almost always a setback that happens in terms of the project timeline. This scenario is common in projects that follow both Agile/Scrum methodology and ones that follow the more traditional Waterfall model. In this report, I will first present two case studies of how requirement changes impacted the timelines of two projects (one following Agile/Scrum methodology and another following Waterfall methodology). In the second part of this report, I will propose and design a user-friendly dashboard, which could be used to speed up the delays caused by changing requirements.