The most critical activity in Requirements Engineering (RE) is Requirements
Management (RM), i.e. a domain that is used to manage requirements in the software development life cycle. Generally, poor RM and requirements quality are considered as major causes for software product failure. As a result, software is terminated and cancelled after investing a lot of money and time. For this reasons, many RM tools are introduced to the market that promise to assist in managing requirements. However, these tools are complex, complicated, and only suitable for extensive projects. Some of them are expensive and it is not cost-effective for small and medium projects. Hence, the objective of this thesis is to develop a support tool that automates RM practices to support small and medium projects in order to help the practitioners managing requirements.
Consequently, a literature study on related areas of requirement management tool and practices is conducted and followed by a survey. The empirical study involves examining current RM practices and the practitioners' needs regarding RM tools. The study shows that there are no RM practices involved and the practitioners are lacking in RM tools even for small and medium projects. These findings are consistent with previous findings that lead to software failure. Thus, it is significant to develop and construct an appropriate tool for Malaysian practitioners that automate RM practices to support small and medium projects. An investigation of the elements appropriate for tools, as well as a survey of RM
tools is performed. Then, it is essential to define RM practices that provide complete guidelines regarding activities, roles, and work products. The development of the tool begins by constructing a requirements model based on RM practices and elements of the tools. The requirements model is validated using Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use (PUEU) in order to study the user acceptance of the model. The model also been reviewed by an expert to ensure it is complete and accurate. Then, a design model is constructed and the tool is developed in JAVA programming language using Eclipse platform. The tool is known as RM Tool for Small and Medium Project (RMT-SMP). Finally, the quality of RMT-SMP has been validated using IS09126 quality model characteristics in a
real-industry case study at Malaysian companies. The result indicates that using RMTSMP has lead to the delivery of quality software product within the budget at the right schedule time. The findings have contributed to the existing literature by reducing the gap specifically in RM and generally in software engineering crises. The conclusion in this thesis is that RMT-SMP is capable, feasible and practical in handling RM activity during the software development life cycle in small and medium projects not only for the Malaysian software industry, but for any industry that are facing the same issues as Malaysia.