Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2009. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-234)

Dissertation (MCIS)--AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (viii, 83 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 005.1068 MA)

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.

Conceptual modeling allows abstraction, communication and consensus building in system development. It is challenging to expand and improve the accuracy of models in an iterative process, producing models able to facilitate analysis. Modeling and analysis can be especially challenging in early Requirements Engineering (RE), where high-level system requirements are discovered. In this stage, hard-to-measure non-functional requirements are critical; understanding the interactions between systems and stakeholders is a key to system success. Goal models have been introduced as a means to ensure stakeholder needs are met in early RE. Because of the high-level, social nature of early RE models, it is important to provide procedures which prompt stakeholder involvement (interaction) and model improvement (iteration). Most current approaches to goal model analysis require quantitative or formal information that is hard to gather in early RE, or produce analysis results automatically over models. Approaches are needed which balance automated analysis over complex models with the need for interaction and iteration. This work develops a framework for iterative, interactive analysis for early RE using agent-goal models. We survey existing approaches for goal model analysis, providing guidelines using domain characteristics to advise on procedure selection. We define requirements for an agent-goal model framework specific to early RE analysis, using these requirements to evaluate the appropriateness of existing work and to motivate and evaluate the components of our analysis framework. We provide a detailed review of forward satisfaction procedures, exploring how different model interpretations affect analysis results. A survey of agent-goal variations in practice is used to create a formal definition of the i* modeling framework which supports sensible syntax variations. This definition is used to precisely define analysis procedures and concepts throughout the work. The framework consists of analysis procedures, implemented in the OpenOME requirements modeling tool, which allow users to ask “What if?” and “Is this goal achievable, and how?” questions. Visualization techniques are introduced to aid analysis understanding. Consistency checks are defined over the interactive portion of the framework. Implementation, performance and potential optimizations are described. Group and individual case studies help to validate framework effectiveness in practice. Contributions are summarized in light of the requirements for early RE analysis. Finally, limitations and future work are described.

Conceptual modeling allows abstraction, communication and consensus building in system development. It is challenging to expand and improve the accuracy of models in an iterative process, producing models able to facilitate analysis. Modeling and analysis can be especially challenging in early Requirements Engineering (RE), where high-level system requirements are discovered. In this stage, hard-to-measure non-functional requirements are critical; understanding the interactions between systems and stakeholders is a key to system success. Goal models have been introduced as a means to ensure stakeholder needs are met in early RE. Because of the high-level, social nature of early RE models, it is important to provide procedures which prompt stakeholder involvement (interaction) and model improvement (iteration). Most current approaches to goal model analysis require quantitative or formal information that is hard to gather in early RE, or produce analysis results automatically over models. Approaches are needed which balance automated analysis over complex models with the need for interaction and iteration. This work develops a framework for iterative, interactive analysis for early RE using agent-goal models. We survey existing approaches for goal model analysis, providing guidelines using domain characteristics to advise on procedure selection. We define requirements for an agent-goal model framework specific to early RE analysis, using these requirements to evaluate the appropriateness of existing work and to motivate and evaluate the components of our analysis framework. We provide a detailed review of forward satisfaction procedures, exploring how different model interpretations affect analysis results. A survey of agent-goal variations in practice is used to create a formal definition of the i* modeling framework which supports sensible syntax variations. This definition is used to precisely define analysis procedures and concepts throughout the work. The framework consists of analysis procedures, implemented in the OpenOME requirements modeling tool, which allow users to ask “What if?” and “Is this goal achievable, and how?” questions. Visualization techniques are introduced to aid analysis understanding. Consistency checks are defined over the interactive portion of the framework. Implementation, performance and potential optimizations are described. Group and individual case studies help to validate framework effectiveness in practice. Contributions are summarized in light of the requirements for early RE analysis. Finally, limitations and future work are described.

<p>Denna rapport behandlar den marknadsinriktade Requirements Engineering (RE) processen. Allt fler företag väljer idag att implementera standardsystem i sina verksamheter. Den situation som ett standardsystem utvecklas i är annorlunda jämfört med den som ett kundspecifikt system utvecklas i. Detta innebär att den traditionella RE-processen inte är anpassad till dessa nya förhållanden.</p><p>Syftet med denna rapport är därför att utreda vad som kännetecknar en marknadsinriktad RE-process som stödjer kravhanteringsarbetet vid utvecklingen av ett standardsystem. Rapporten avser även att undersöka hur RE tillämpas av marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare i praktiken. Detta har gjorts genom en litteraturstudie och intervjuer med tre marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare.</p><p>Rapporten resulterar i en beskrivning av den marknadsinriktade RE-processens kännetecken och centrala aktiviteter samt en översiktlig sammanställning över hur marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare tillämpar RE i praktiken. Resultatet belyser att de teorier och aktiviteter som betraktas som centrala i den marknadsinriktade RE-processen även tillämpas i praktiken.</p>

Denna rapport behandlar den marknadsinriktade Requirements Engineering (RE) processen. Allt fler företag väljer idag att implementera standardsystem i sina verksamheter. Den situation som ett standardsystem utvecklas i är annorlunda jämfört med den som ett kundspecifikt system utvecklas i. Detta innebär att den traditionella RE-processen inte är anpassad till dessa nya förhållanden. Syftet med denna rapport är därför att utreda vad som kännetecknar en marknadsinriktad RE-process som stödjer kravhanteringsarbetet vid utvecklingen av ett standardsystem. Rapporten avser även att undersöka hur RE tillämpas av marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare i praktiken. Detta har gjorts genom en litteraturstudie och intervjuer med tre marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare. Rapporten resulterar i en beskrivning av den marknadsinriktade RE-processens kännetecken och centrala aktiviteter samt en översiktlig sammanställning över hur marknadsinriktade systemtillverkare tillämpar RE i praktiken. Resultatet belyser att de teorier och aktiviteter som betraktas som centrala i den marknadsinriktade RE-processen även tillämpas i praktiken.