A comprehensive approach to identifying key stakeholders in complicated software ecosystems

Abstract

Software stakeholders are critical to the success of software development projects, because they influence the strategic direction, the financial backing, and have specific knowledge – all of which sustains the software being developed. As the complexity of software environments increase, and expectations for cross-product integration heighten, there is more pressure on actors within software ecosystems (SECOs) to work in unison to produce reliably integrated software, efficiently. Recently collected empirical findings show that requirements managers working in SECO environments believe that all key stakeholders can be identified, but that it requires analysis, investigation and expert knowledge. Until now, the existing frameworks describing stakeholder identification do not take into account the level of dependencies that occur in SECOs nor the implications on SECO health. This research proposes that a structured comprehensive approach to identifying stakeholders in SECOs would provide practitioners the guidance they need to avoid the common pitfalls of poor stakeholder identification, including late requirements from critical stakeholders which can risk the software release schedule, software quality, and scope.