Blockchain for Requirements Traceability: A Grounded Theory Approach

Blockchain technology has emerged as a “disruptive innovation” that has received significant attention in academic and organizational settings. However, the existing research is focused on technical issues of blockchain systems, overlooking the organizational perspective. This study adopted the Ground Theory methodology 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 which was identified as the core category, along with 17 concepts. 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 production implementations 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 [1]. The authors advocate the application of blockchain as a shared, trusted and available traceability knowledge base that keeps track of artifacts and trace links created by cross-organizational and distributed teams throughout the software development lifecycle.