Hierarchical Permissioned Blockchain and Traceability Of Requirement Changes

Abstract

Requirement elicitation plays crucial part in success rates of a software project. Now a lot of project management methods are moving towards agile development which allows changes in requirement specification in any phase of project lifecycle. In a project there are many stakeholders. But not all of them has the same relevancy to the software requirements. Sometimes some requirement changes happen with wrong stakeholder source. These changes cause problem later. Such as unused function or missing an important function. This problem increases unnecessary cost for the project. Furthermore, change is inevitable in agile development. With frequent changes, it is difficult to track all the changes made. On the other hand, blockchain gives an immutable, traceable, decentralized platform where data can be added through consensus. In a hierarchical permissioned blockchain, the level of permission can be defined for each group or individual nodes through smart contract. Therefore, a hierarchical permissioned blockchain for stakeholder permission to make changes and traceability of mid-development requirement change is proposed. Here, it is proposed that there should be hierarchy among the stakeholders and levels of permission they have to change one or more part of the requirements according to the project needs. This control may be implemented with smart contracts and if needed, with intelligent agents as well. Also, with the immutability of blockchain and smart contracts and external databases, traceability will also be ensured.