Techn. Univ., Diplomarbeit--Wien, 2001.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Zugl.: München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008 / Hergestellt on demand

Zugl.: Koblenz, Landau (Pfalz), Univ., Diss., 2008

Zugl.: Koblenz, Landau (Pfalz), Univ., Diss., 2008 / Lizenzpflichtig

Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2000--Aachen.

No description available.

In today's world of global software teams, managing members from multiple countries and cultures adds to an already complex mix of software productivity issues. While software team compositions have been researched based on tasks, personality, and role descriptions, few models exist to help software project managers reason about software teams with respect to culture. As more culturally diverse teams develop software products, software project managers need to manage teams based on cultural factors that will inevitably arise. This research examines the effect of culture on software project team management, and its impacts on software productivity, especially as it pertains to requirements engineering tasks. The main objective is to investigate how individuals from different cultures work together in software development projects, and to use that understanding to formulate a model for reasoning about key cultural factors. Communication is a critical part of software project team effectiveness. Hence, this research examines how cultural factors (e.g., language, attitudes, roles, social organization, and time) affect the communication process in software development projects. Based on an initial survey of multicultural teams, this research examines some of the issues that arise from diverse teams working together. The survey results led to language and attitudes as dominant aspects of communication that impact software productivity. Time, roles, and social organization also had considerable influence from the preliminary results. From these results, the research approach was refined and more specific survey instruments were designed to aid in identifying the critical factors that impact software productivity. The results of the second set of the surveys showed that various cultures have different attitudes and behaviors, which in turn have distinct impacts on productivity in terms of more rework and delay. Furthermore, multicultural teams have miscommunication issues with respect to differences in languages, attitudes, roles, time, and social organization. The effect of some cultural factors on communication and productivity vary from culture to culture. Based on the results of the surveys, a model for Multicultural Software Project Team Management is described. This model was substantiated with further surveys using software professionals with experience working on multicultural teams. / Ph. D.

This thesis presents a narrative-based Requirements Engineering (RE) mediation model (NREMM) to help RE practitioners to effectively identify, define, and resolve conflicts of interests, goals, and requirements in the RE process. Conflict has received increasing attention in the Software Engineering (SE) literature. However, in the current RE literature, conflict has received fairly superficial attention. Previous research views conflict as an issue causing "inconsistency" in a requirements specification. As a result, current research has proposed a wide range of inconsistency checking and modelling tools, which address the result of conflict rather than fundamental causes and roots of the conflict. Little attention is given to the socio-psychological aspect of conflict. Furthermore, previous work views the resolution of conflict in RE as a negotiation-based process, in which a requirements engineer acts as a representative of a developer site and negotiates with users. This thesis differentiates itself from previous work by recognising conflict is more than an issue of inconsistency. This thesis argues that conflict is a social and organisational phenomenon. This thesis also argues that the process of resolving conflict in RE can be viewed as a socially mediated process, in which a requirements engineer can act as a mediator rather than a representative of the developer/user site. The fundamental difference between negotiation and mediation is that, negotiations often only involve parties themselves reaching an agreement. Mediation then involves a mediator to lead the process and help parties to reach an agreement. However, there is a distinct gap in the RE literature, in which the role of a requirements engineer as a mediator has not been explicitly explored. To address the socio-psychological aspect of conflict, Wins lade and Monk (2000)'s narrative mediation model is introduced, justified and translated into the context of RE by following a systematic and transparent methodological approach. This leads to a new RE specialised mediation model (NREMM), which includes three phases: conflict identification, conflict definition and conflict resolution. The new model aims to be not only theoretically robust but also practically useful. It builds on the storytelling metaphor advocated by narrative mediation theory and also integrates well-established and practical RE specialised techniques. The NREMM was empirically assessed and evaluated. I used an expert panel interview survey to empirically assess whether the NREMM is theoretically robust. The experts' feedback indicated that the NREMM is capable of helping RE practitioners to resolve conflict in the RE process. The experts also indicated that the use of story-telling as a theoretical underpinning is a strength, and matches well with current state of the RE practice. I also used a quasi-experiment to empirically evaluate whether the NREMM is practically useful in a simplified real-world scenario (University of Hertfordshire's StudyNet) by using real users of a real system. The experimental results indicated that the NREMM is a useful model to help RE practitioners to identify, define and resolve conflict in practice. This is evidenced by significantly higher satisfaction results and a better perception of the mediator's performance obtained from workshops where the mediator implemented the NREMM. The key contribution of this thesis is the NREMM, which is a useful model to not only help RE practitioners resolve conflicts among different stakeholders but also improve stakeholders' cooperativeness and satisfaction.

The agile principles applied to software engineering include iterative and incremental development, frequent releases of software, direct stakeholder involvement, minimal documentation and welcome changing requirements even late in the development cycle. The Agile Requirements Engineering applies the above mentioned principles to the Requirements Engineering process. Agile Requirements Engineering welcomes changing requirements even late in the development cycle. This is achieved by using the agile practice of evolutionary requirements which suggests that requirements should evolve over the course of many iterations rather than being gathered and specified upfront. Hence, changes to requirements even late in the development cycle can be accommodated easily. There is however, no real process to the agile approach to Requirements Engineering. In order to overcome this disadvantage, we propose to adapt the Requirements Generation Model (a plan-driven Requirements Engineering model) to an agile environment in order to structure the Agile Requirements Engineering process. The hybrid model named the Agile Requirements Generation Model is a soft-structured process that supports the intents of the agile approach. This model combines the best features of the Requirements Generation Model and Agile Software Development. / Master of Science