2013 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT)
Effective Usage of AI Technique for Requirement
Change Management Practices
Hummera Naz, Yasir Hafeez Motla, Sohail Asghar, Muhammad Azeem Abbas, Asma Khatoon
University Institute of Information Technology, PMAS. Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
hummeraaslam@yahoo.com, yasir@uaar.edu.pk, sohail.asghar@uaar.edu.pk, azeem.abbas@uaar.edu.pk, asma_arid861@yahoo.com
Abstract—Requirements change management is a vital activity of
the software development and even after maintenance. When we
change one requirement it effects the other requirements of the
system. A proper impact analysis maintains a repository of
changing requirement, reusing previous experiences and reduces
rework effort, is also essential for better requirement change
management. There is also a need of a technique which improves
requirement change management in a better way. In this paper,
a model has been introduced which integrates Requirement
Change Management and CBR (Case Based Reasoning)
technique. Expert review method is used to evaluate our research.
This frame work gives a better approach which manages
requirement changes to the system. Our research outcome, i.e.
the CBR technique used with the RCM, can provide a better
approach to solve the issues of managing changes to the system.
It maintains a repository by using CBR technique which is
helpful to manage changes in future and we are able to solve the
new change on the basis of previous experience.
Keywords: Requirement Management, Requirement Change
Management, Case Based Reasoning, Artificial Intelligence, Need
based requirement management.
I. INTRODUCTION
Requirements engineering is the task of collecting,
structuring, and correctly representing the user's requirement
so they can perfectly be embodied in systems, which meet
those requirements. [4].
Requirements management (RM) manage changes in the
requirements throughout requirement engineering procedure
and development. Requirement management contains
activities related, to identification of change, maintenance of
change, traceability and changes management of requirements
[4]. Requirement management handle changes to approved
requirements, relationship between requirements, and
dependency between requirement document and other
document produced throughout the software engineering
processes [1].
Requirements change management (RCM) is defined as a
procedure of managing changes in requirements throughout
the requirement engineering process and system development.
A proper requirement change management in the organization
978-1-4673-5825-5/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
ISBN: 978-1-4673-5825-5
ensures the success and improves the organizational processes
[2]. Overall progress of the project is highly affected by the
requirement changes. It not only creates problems with
schedule but also enhances the approximated budget of the
project. All of these issues lead us toward the need of efficient
and competent Requirements Changes Management model [1].
Changes to single requirement may have impact on other
requirements and ripple during a system and broader
organizational objectives. Requirements changes have to be
handled and assessed to make sure that they are economically
feasible, and add business needs of the customer organization
[3]. Therefore poor management of requirement may guide us
to software failures and also leads to the business loss [4].
Case based reasoning is a famous artificial intelligence (AI)
technique which solves a problem by remembering previous
similar circumstances and reuses information and knowledge
from the solution to those situations [12]. Case based
reasoning (CBR) reuse similar past experience and use them
to solve the current problem. In case based technique,
knowledge is set in past practices [14]. CBR is the logic based
on a set of solved cases that make the repository of cases,
which consist of a problem that has happened in the past with
its solution. A CBR system clarifies the problem solving in
four steps (retrieving, reusing, revising and retaining) [15].
A common CBR application can be explained by a cycle
composed of the following four steps as in figure 1. In first
step we retrieve the most similar case or cases. Second step is
to resolve the problem and we reuse the information in that
case. Third step is revise in which we revise the planned
solution and finally in last step we retain this experience
expected to be useful for future problem solving.
We present a requirement change management model in
which we apply AI technique case based reasoning on
requirement change management practices. In this model we
consider each requirement as a case and make a case based
repository. We apply case based reasoning to retrieve the
previous cases and on the bases of past experiences, and then
we make the decision about change. The main emphasis is on
the impact analysis, and then we make decision about the
implementation of the change.
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Figure 1 CBR Cycle
II. RELATED WORK
Many researchers have presented their work in the field of
requirement change management in which they highlight
different issues related with the requirement change
management. Some issues highlighted by Sabeen are impact
analysis, change conflict, change prioritization, negotiation,
risk assessment, change measurement, change estimation,
requirements planning and change learning [1]. Many authors
present different models and framework to resolve the issues
of requirement change management. Some of them are
discussed below.
Requirement change management is an essential process
of software development so there is a need of decision-making
model, which is used to mange changing requirements.
Authors have used decision making to manage the changing
requirements. They suggested that managing changing
requirements are strongly linked with decision making, so
organization should have appropriate decision making model
[4].
Bassam has proposed a framework of change management
for Business Process Management which support dynamic
changes appropriately. It is based on the integration between
Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Coloured Petri Net
(CPN) which supports dynamic changes in system. However,
in this research they use a very high level of Petri net, which is
very difficult to understand [5].
By using extreme programming, we are able to reduce the
rework of change. In this paper they introduce a method to
decrease the rework of changing requirements in XP situation
with some changes into the Planning Games, story card, and
component card. [6].
Atsushi presents a need based requirement change
management (NRM) model to manage the changing
requirements. NRM model resourcefully manages continuous
changing of system requirement NRM model based on the
need of system of stake holders and manages the requirement
change effectively in a way that the requirements, which are
more needed, are implemented in the system [9].
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Luigi Lavazza used process modelling for change
management .They present a methodological approach which
is based on enhancing traceability and processing
measurements. Their approach also deals with the quantitative
evaluation of impact of requirement changes, quantitative
judgment of the cost of the developments activities that must
be accepted to complete the changes [10].
Sharon investigates the relationship among source of the
change and requirement. In this study, they build taxonomy of
requirement changes based on source of the change. Card
sorting technique is used to collect data. The taxonomy makes
the important difference between trigger and uncertainty
which give rise to the change, and clearly defines change
source [11].
CBR is AI technique which is used by many researchers in
the field of software engineering. We investigate some studies
which use CBR technique.
Herbert and Josef use case based reasoning technique to
support reusability of design artefacts in requirement
engineering. In this paper author develops CBR technique to
search for design artefacts in a database and computes
measures for the fulfilment of requirements. CBR technique is
used to estimate the degree of fulfilment of requirements and
also supports reusability [17].
Hajar evaluates the requirements quality by referring to
previously stored requirements quality analysis cases by using
CBR. This research improves the SRS quality analysis process
with the help of Case-Based Reasoning technique which
provides solution to requirements quality analysis problem.
CBR allows reusing past cases or experiences for SRS quality
analysis problems without reconstructing the solutions from
scratch for the cases which many times come across in the
past [18].
S. Berzisa gives an approach for the knowledge reuse in
project management during configuration of the project
management information system. The main emphasis is on
project change management module. CBR is used to obtain
best practices for configuration of software and derive
recommendation for PM. CBR based knowledge reuse selects
appropriate configuration of PMIS [21].
Sasithorn apply case based reasoning is to reuse software
design. They present a methodology which allows developer
to reuse design of previously developed software which is
based on the CBR. The aim of this approach is to make use
of existing designs by matching user’s queried diagram with
historical or previously designed diagrams [20].
According to Lily Sun users requirements can be
represented as a case which can be reasoned to enable the
requirements analysis. They present an ontology model with
AI technique which enhances the RE process for modelling
individual user needs and discovers user requirement.
Ontological model captures individual user requirements and
analysis of requirements [19].
Hence from the study of literature we came to know that
we can apply CBR technique to resolve some issues of
requirement change management and improve the process of
requirement change management by reusing the past
 2013 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT)
experiences. For better requirement change management there
is a need to apply the previous knowledge to accept the new
changes.
A. Typical Requirements Change Management Processes
The processes of requirements change management helps
in managing the changing requirement and completes the
project successfully. With a suitable requirement management
process a change cannot originate ripple consequence on other
requirements. [7].
There are different change management processes as given
in literature According to wasim et al requirement change
process consist of six steps Initiation of Change , Receiving
Change Request, Evaluating Change Request, Approve or
Disapproving Change Request, Implementation of Approving
Change and Configuration of Change [7] . According to
Simon Lock et al the main activities of change management
process are change request creation, impact analysis, system
release planning, implement change, test and verifying change,
system release and integration [3]. X.Luo proposed a model
which comprises of Change Determination of Requirements,
Change Approval, and finally Perform Change [8]. The
change management process defined by Khaled El Emam has
four steps which are Initial Issue Evaluation, Preliminary
Analysis, Detailed Change Analysis, and Implementation [16].
N Nurmuliani summarizes four main phases of the
requirement change which is Changing Request Initialization,
Change Evaluation and validation, Change Implementations,
Change Verifications [13].
We have discussed different change management process
from literature which is presented by different authors and
follows to manage the change. On the basis of these processes
we find some common process which must be followed when
the change occurs and we have shown our typical change
management process in figure 2.
Figure 2 Typical RCM process flow
ISBN: 978-1-4673-5825-5
III. DESCRIPTION OF MODEL
Requirement changes have impact on the progress of the
software. When the requirements are changed it could
increase the cost and budget of the software. It also causes the
problem of traceability and conflicts between the requirements.
Thus our aim is to develop a requirement change management
model which applies Case based reasoning on requirement
change management practices. Our frame work consists of
three phases.
A. Initial Phase
1) Initiate change A new changing request is initiated by the
customer. The process of requirement change starts when
a new change request is initiated by the stakeholder. After
the request is initiated we move to second step of the
model.
2) Preliminary case At this step a new request is considered
as a new case and each new case has the case number,
description of case and solution, as shown in table I. The
new changing requirement is considered as a preliminary
case. CBR is a good technique to maintain a repository
of cases so that we concern them in future for making
decision about requirement change.
3) Case retrieval The next step is to retrieve the cases which
are similar to the new change request. We concern these
cases in impact analysis and try to reuse the solution of
TABLE 1 STRUCTURE OF CASE
previous problems to solve the new problem and it is also
helpful to estimate the cost and budget of the new problem
B. Intermediate Phase
1) Check traceability In this step we check the traceability of
the requirement that it is traceable to the baseline. If any
traceability issue occurs the requirement is not accepted.
2) Determine Impact Over Change In this step the impact of
the changing requirement is analysed. During the impact
analysis we keep in view the previous experiences of
requirement change and determine the impact of
requirement. We check the cost and benefit associated
with the requirement and the impact of the requirement
on other requirements.
3) Manage Conflict We analyse the new requirement and if
any conflicts occur between the changing requirement
and other requirement we move to this step and resolve
the issues of the requirements.
C. Final Phase
1) Decision about change At this step decision about the
requirement is made on the basis of all the analysis which
we have done , if change is feasible to accept, we accept
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the change and circulate it to all concerns other wise the TABLE 2 EXPERT OPINION
change is rejected.

Y= agreed ∞ = partially agreed = not

agreed
The expert panel consists of 10 experts in which one is the
project manager having 12 years of experience, two are team
leaders having 8 and 5 year of experience respectively, one
software engineer having 15 years of experience, two
Requirement engineer and one developer, software
architecture has 4 year of experience, requirement analyst and
stake holder. We evaluate our frame work against factors
shown table 2 and expert opinion is shown in figure 4.

Figure 3 CB-RCM Model

2) Store case In this last step the new change requirement
which is being considered as a case is stored into the case
based repository that we will be able to use in future. We
maintain a repository of cases and every accepted
requirement has been saved into the repository.

IV. EVALUATION Figure 4 Graph of Experts Opinion

For the evaluation of our model we take the experts review
of small structure organization. We present our model to the
experts and ask about their reviews when they implement our
model in there organization. We take their reviews about the
requirement change management process with our model and
without our model. We check the difference of the
performance when they use our model. According to the
experts it is a better approach for requirement change
management of any organization. The technique CBR, which
is used to maintain a repository and also help in impact
analysis, is an efficient approach. In future we will conduct
more case studies of large scale organizations and also
presents a more detailed CB-RCM model.
• Customer satisfaction: Increases the customer
satisfaction level.
• Maintaining history: It provides a good technique to
maintain the history of the changes that we are able
to use them in future.
• Resolved conflicts: This model resolves the conflicts
occur during the requirement change.
• Change impact on cost: Our frame work is helpful to
reduce the cost of change.
• Change impact over time: Our frame work is helpful
to reduce the time required for change and deliver the
system on time.

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