MANAGEMENT OF REQUIREMENT VOLATILITY Journal of Information Technology Management Volume XXI, Number 2, 2010                                     XAVIER INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT BHUBANESWAR !"#$%&’&#(  Requirement volatility during software project development is known to be the most critical risk, and managing this is paramount to success in software project. The research described in this paper is based on a combination of interviews and a survey in two phases and aims to investigate the organizational practices in dealing with this risk, and how it is influenced by the adopted project execution strategy with regard to process model selection decisions. The results indicate study participants’ heightened perception of the risk of requirement volatility. Thirteen different approaches to managing projects under volatility could be identified, of which the practice of involving the business side was the most frequent. Differences could be observed in the usage of these approaches depending upon the project and process characteristics. The current scenario regarding adoption of different frameworks and tools for managing changing require8 ments has also been pointed out. The study results are expected to assist project managers in their choices related to project administration under requirement volatility. )*+,-./ requirement volatility, project risk, management approach, involving business side  Despite advances in Software Engineering over the past 30 years, most of the software projects still ex8 perience numerous requirements changes during their life cycle, brought about by the dynamic nature of the devel8 opment activities [15]. Requirement volatility, which re8 fers to the change to requirements during the software development life cycle, has been reported as one of the main factors that cause a project to be challenged [26]. Approaches like use of risk driven process models [4], joint application design (JAD), prototyping and configura8 tion management change control board [12], use of re8 quirements baselining [28] have been suggested for man8 aging projects under volatility. Despite advancement in project management tools and methodologies, a Standish Group study [27] found out high instance of project fail8 ure and requirement fluctuations, indicating some level of organizational inadequacy in properly managing change. The importance of contextual change management tech8 niques in the present scenario of rapidly evolving business and technological paradigm was highlighted by Ebert and Man [7], but has not been investigated upon. This study seeks to investigate the organiza8 tional perception regarding the problem of requirements changes. We want to find out the level of awareness con8 cerning requirement volatility, the management ap8 proaches available to cope with the problem and their suitability under different project environments. Some of the available organizational frameworks to address re8 quirement volatility have been reported. The effect of