Obsolete Software Requirements

Abstract: Context. Requirements changes are unavoidable in any software project. Requirements change over time as software projects progress, and involved stakeholders (mainly customers) and developers gain better understanding of the final product. Additionally, time and budget constraints prevent implementing all candidate requirements and force project management to select a subset of requirements that are prioritized more important than the others so as to be implemented. As a result, some requirements become cancelled and deleted during the elicitation and specification phase while other requirements are considered not important during the prioritization phase. A common scenario in this situation is to leave the excluded requirements for being considered in the next release. The constant leaving of the excluded requirements for the next release may simply render them obsolete.