The impact of environmental evolution on requirements changes

An evolving environment can have such an impact on the requirements of an existing software system that it can render the system obsolete. We have experienced precisely such a loss in our research environment. The Congruence Evaluation System was an innovative proof of concept (CES POC) system, developed over two years with three person-years of effort. It was part of an environment which was constantly evolving, and this change in the environment dictated the fitness of the CES POC system in the environment. The system served excellently for the basic research goal of discovery and proof, but failed seriously in the long-term goal of evolvability of the entire suite of tools being built concurrently by several researchers in the team. In this thesis, we describe a case study of requirements changes in an evolving environment involved in the development of unprecedented systems. In particular, we identify requirements-oriented factors that caused the demise of an innovative system in such an environment. The thesis also describes some lessons learnt from this experience