Requirements Volatility in Software Architecture Design: An Exploratory Case Study

2026-03-18

AI Summary

Frequent requirement changes pose a significant threat to software architecture stability, often leading to project delays, cost overruns, and technical debt. This study addresses this challenge by focusing on the architectural design level, conducting an exploratory case study within a commercial and consumer software company. Through 15 semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, the research systematically identifies the root causes of requirement volatility and elucidates their specific impact mechanisms on architectural decisions. The findings reveal core challenges such as scheduling difficulties and architectural erosion, and propose targeted mitigation strategies. These insights offer practical guidance for designing highly adaptable architectures capable of thriving in dynamic business environments.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: (Computational) Cognitive Architectures
• Machine Learning: Deep Neural Architectures and Foundation Models
• Application Domains: Software Engineering

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution

Abstract

Requirements volatility is a major issue in software (SW) development, causing problems such as project delays and cost overruns. Even though there is a considerable amount of research related to requirement volatility, the majority of it is inclined toward project management aspects. The relationship between SW architecture design and requirements volatility has not been researched widely, even though changing requirements may for example lead to higher defect density during testing. An exploratory case study was conducted to study how requirements volatility affects SW architecture design. Fifteen semi-structured, thematic interviews were conducted in the case company, which provides the selection of software products for business customers and consumers. The research revealed the factors, such as requirements uncertainty and dynamic business environment, causing requirements volatility in the case company. The study identified the challenges that requirements volatility posed to SW architecture design, including scheduling and architectural technical debt. In addition, this study discusses means of mitigating the factors that cause requirements volatility and addressing the challenges posed by requirements volatility. SW architects are strongly influenced by requirement volatility. Thus understanding the factors causing requirements volatility as well as means to mitigate the challenges has high industrial relevance.

Problem

• requirements volatility
• software architecture design
• requirements uncertainty
• architectural technical debt
• dynamic business environment

Innovation

• requirements volatility
• software architecture design
• architectural technical debt
• exploratory case study
• requirements uncertainty