Assessing challenges of continuous integration in the context of software requirements breakdown: a case study

Abstract

The complexity of software development has increased over the last few years. Customers today demand higher quality and more stable software with shorter delivery time. Software companies strive to improve their processes in order to meet theses challenges. Agile practices have been widely praised for the focus they put on customer collaboration and shorter feedback loops. Companies that have well established agile practices have been trying to improve their processes further by adopting continuous integration - the concept where teams integrate their code several times a day. However, adopting continuous integration is not a trivial task since it requires frequent integration of smaller units of requirements that can be tested separately. This thesis presents a case study in which we, based on interviews at a major Swedish telecommunication services and equipment provider, assess the challenges of continuous integration and software requirements breakdown and their in uence on the implementation of a continuous integration process.