Predicting Future Change Requests in Agile Software Engineering
— Software engineering based on agile methods is different than plan driven in many aspects. Based on our practical experience in agile software engineering we concluded that one of the most important success factors is predicting future change requests. This article emphasizes importance of the future change requests frequency as a very important analysis factor for the later solution selection and software maintenance. It describes a positive experience related to the agile software engineering of the software system for the data import in an environment with frequent change requests, through a case study. The main reason for the success is that the estimation about future changes is taken into account during the analysis. Data import is based on the web service for the XML upload and Oracle database objects for importing, storing and checking data. Meta-model based design is applied to gain flexibility and meet customer’s frequent change requests. A change request is implemented through changing the meta-model parameters which is fast and reliable. There were many change requests through the life of this software system and all of them where low cost changes. Initial higher cost to develop the software that is easy changeable is reimbursed later during the software evolution. Also, changes are implemented fast, with a minimum effort, with the high quality and with the high customer satisfaction.