Abstract
Today’s software products are designed, developed and maintained by a variety of distributed stakeholders that are often cross-organizational. These stakeholders need to share artifacts and have a holistic view of the software development lifecycle. The traditional approach of storing artifacts in centralized repositories and guarding their access by means of access control systems is not sufficient in inter-organizational software projects, as it cannot ensure immutability, integrity, and availability of software artifacts. This thesis challenges traditional centralized approaches by designing, implementing, and evaluating decentralized, yet trustworthy solutions for requirements traceability. The main finding of the thesis is that blockchain technology, due to its inherent properties, can function as the backbone of the software development lifecycle and store artifacts generated by various tools in a decentralized, yet reliable manner. Leveraging blockchain to create tamper-proof record of requirements, their changes, and related artifacts can be useful to all the stakeholders of the software lifecycle, including software engineers, project managers, customers. The proposed prototype provides all stakeholders with a trustworthy view of what/when/how and by whom artifacts were created and/or modified and ensures that stakeholders are working on the same reality. Ultimately, the increased visibility and transparency enhances communication, coordination, and trust between stakeholders.
List of papers
Paper I. S. Demi "Blockchain-oriented Requirements Engineering: A Framework," in 2020 IEEE 28th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), pp. 428–433, IEEE, 2020. DOI: 10.1109/RE48521.2020.00063. The article is not available in DUO due to publisher restrictions. The published version is available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/RE48521.2020.00063 |
Paper II. S. Demi, M. Sanchez-Gordon, and R. Colomo-Palacios, "What have we learnt from the challenges of (semi-) automated requirements traceability? A discussion on blockchain applicability," IET Software, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 391–411, 2021. DOI: 10.1049/sfw2.12035. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1049/sfw2.12035 |
Paper III. S. Demi, R. Colomo-Palacios, and M. Sanchez-Gordon, "Software Engineering Applications Enabled by Blockchain Technology: A Systematic Mapping Study," Applied sciences, vol. 11, no. 7, p. 2960, 2021. DOI: 10.3390/app11072960. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/app11072960 |
Paper IV. S. Demi, M. Sánchez-Gordón, and R. Colomo-Palacios, "A Blockchain-Enabled Framework for Requirements Traceability," in Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 28th European Conference, EuroSPI 2021, Krems, Austria, September 1–3, 2021, Proceedings, pp. 3–13, Springer, 2021. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85521-5_1. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85521-5_1 |
Paper V. S. Demi, M. Sánchez-Gordón, and M. Kristiansen, "Blockchain for Requirements Traceability: A Qualitative Approach," Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, p. e2493, 2022. DOI: 10.1002/smr.2493. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2493 |
Paper VI. S. Demi, R. Colomo-Palacios, M. Sánchez-Gordón, C. Velasco, and R. Cano, "A Neural Blockchain for Requirements Traceability: BC4RT Prototype," ,” in Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 29th European Conference, EuroSPI 2022, Salzburg, Austria, August 31–September 2, 2022, Proceedings, pp. 45–59, Springer, 2022. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-15559-8_4. The article is included in the thesis. Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15559-8_4 |
Paper VII. S. Demi, M. Sánchez-Gordón, and R. Colomo-Palacios, "Trustworthy and Collaborative Requirements Traceability: Validation of a blockchain-enabled framework,", Submitted to Journal of Software: Evolution and Process. To be published. The paper is not available in DUO awaiting publishing. |