Requirements Understanding: A Challenge in Global Software Development, Industrial Surveys in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

In recent years, Global Software Development (GSD) increasingly spread across the globe due to benefits it provides like low cost, availability of resources and access to wider and cheap human resource market. However, it is evident from literature that software development teams face many challenges in this new overwhelming paradigm like culture difference, coordination, communication and loss of teamness and so on. Further, it is also evident that Requirements Engineering (RE) is the most complicated and sturdy phase of software development even in collocated, but increasing pace of GSD has made it more diverse and complicated. Consequently in such fashion, cross functional stakeholders must specify, analyze and manage requirements across diverse cultures, time zones and organizational boundaries; thereby Requirements Understanding (RU) is necessary. In this paper, the authors identified different factors of GSD challenges and their impact on RU and solutions used to cater these challenges. For this purpose, several industrial surveys have been conducted in well reputed software companies in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) involved in GSD, with the intent to get views and perceptions regarding the impact of challenges on RU and solution used to overcome those challenges.