Blockchain for Requirements Traceability: A Qualitative Approach

Blockchain technology has emerged as a “disruptive innovation” that has received significant attention in academic and organizational settings. However, most of the existing research is focused on technical issues of blockchain systems, overlooking the organizational perspective. This study adopted Grounded Theory to unveil the blockchain implementation process in organizations from the lens of blockchain experts. The results revealed 3 main categories: key activities, success factors, and challenges related to blockchain implementation in organizations, the latter being identified as the core category, along with 17 other concepts. Findings suggested that the majority of blockchain projects stop at the pilot stage and outlined organizational resistance to change as the core challenge. According to the experts, the following factors contribute to the organizational resistance to change: innovation-production gap, conservative management, and centralized mentality. The study aims to contribute to the existing blockchain literature by providing a holistic and domain-agnostic view of the blockchain implementation process in organizational settings. This can potentially encourage the development and implementation of blockchain solutions and guide practitioners who are interested in leveraging the inherent benefits of this technology. In addition, the results are used to improve a blockchain-enabled requirements traceability framework proposed in our previous paper.