Kashumi Madampe

PhD

My PhD thesis in Software Engineering, titled Understanding Requirements Changes in Software Development and Their Influence on Practitioners, was marked as exceptional and excellent by the examiners. I was advised by A/Prof. Rashina Hoda and Prof. John Grundy at Monash University, Australia. The first year of my PhD was done at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Using mixed-methods approaches, I mainly explored the multi-faceted nature of requirements changes (e.g., feature requests), developers’ emotional responses and emotional intelligence in handling requirements changes. I also conducted preliminary investigations on technical responses to requirements changes and how behaviour change models can be used to better understand agile teams. The PhD research resulted in a taxonomy of requirements changes in agile contexts, a decision guide to decide when to introduce and accept requirements changes, several practical recommendations for developers to better handle requirements changes, and a Trello plugin prototype to self-report and monitor emotions in agile teams. These findings are available in publications in IEEE TSE, JSS, ICSE (new ideas and emerging results), ASE (HCSE-CS workshop), and CHASE. Preprints of the publications can be found here.

I won the Monash Faculty of IT Postgraduate Publications Award as an appreciation of the publications I produced during my PhD, and I was nominated for the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence.