A CHALLENGE-DRIVEN APPROACH TO IMPROVE SOFTWARE SYSTEM RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT PROCESSES

Date

2025-8-27

Author

GÜNEŞ, HANDE

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Research and Development (R&D) projects are conducted across various sectors, particularly in automotive, energy, medical/pharmaceutical, and software industries. These projects present significant challenges due to the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the R&D lifecycle. This study focuses on software systems R&D projects, which play a critical role across nearly all industries today. The objectives of this study are to identify the challenges faced in software system R&D projects, make these challenges visible at the process level, and provide a guideline for improving project processes and addressing the challenges based on the Disciplined Agile Delivery framework. To achieve this, interviews were conducted with 12 individuals representing nine distinct roles across five different organizations. A total of 93 challenge instances were identified. Each challenge was thoroughly analyzed and mapped to the relevant processes defined in the ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 Systems and Software Engineering – Software Lifecycle Processes standard. The challenges were then categorized into 27 unique first-level themes and 88 unique second-level categories. The process mapping results revealed that most challenges are associated with the Project Planning Process (20%), followed by the Acquisition Process (16%), the Stakeholder Needs and Requirements Identification Process (9%), and the Supply Process (8%). Finally, an improvement approach for software system R&D project processes was proposed, based on alternative solutions provided within the Disciplined Agile Delivery framework.

Subject Keywords

Software System, R&D Project Challenges, ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207, Mapping Study, Disciplined Agile Delivery

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115690

Collections

Graduate School of Informatics, Thesis