Shortening Requirements Engineering: Dual Imperative Action Research Study.

A computer parts company was losing market share because the systems development life cycle (SDLC) took too long. We reduce the requirements engineering (RE) phase of the SDLC while maintaining current levels of product quality and increasing the company competitiveness by reducing the product time-to-market. Action research, a practical and widely used method of inquiry, was used to solve the problem. There are five types of action research (canonical, dialogical, collaborative, dual imperative, and participatory), but dual imperative action research seemed most appropriate for our study. The problem solving approach used in the study combined joint application design (JAD), unified modeling language (UML), group decision support systems (GDSS), and computer aided software engineering (CASE). We successfully reduced the SDLC time from fourteen to four days, a productivity increase of 250%.