On the understanding of requirements-driven collaboration: a framework and an empirical field investigation

Description

Requirements engineering is at the heart of software engineering, and as such, it involves collaboration among many project team members. This collaboration is driven by coordination needs and relies on communication and knowledge that members have of their colleagues and related activities. Ineffective coordination with those who work on requirements dependencies may result in project failure. To study the coordination of those who need to coordinate work due to interdependencies in requirements, this dissertation introduces the concept of requirements-driven collaboration as collaboration that occurs during the elicitation, definition, specification, implementation, testing, and management of requirements. The first contribution of this research is a framework to study requirements-driven collaboration. This framework is based on social network theory and provides techniques to study communication and fleeting knowledge that underlying collaboration driven by requirements. This framework was incrementally developed throughout the research, first informed by literature review and then empirically-informed through its application in case studies of requirements-driven collaboration. The initial, literature-informed version of the framework was used to guide the design of empirical investigation of requirements-driven collaboration in two globally-distributed software development projects. The framework was then revised based on the insights obtained from its application in the two projects. The empirical evidence about requirements-driven collaboration in these projects represent the second major contribution of this dissertation. Among others, I identified that for both projects the membership of the requirements-driven social networks are dynamic and include important cross-site and cross-team interactions, that the power of distributing knowledge is not in the hands of few team members, and that there are members brokering information between two otherwise unconnected colleagues. The research in this dissertation brings implications for requirements engineering and for the study of collaboration is software projects. By providing researchers and practitioners with a set of techniques to study and evidence about communication and fleeting knowledge in requirements-driven collaboration, the framework offers a mechanism to examine fine-grained details in software projects. The insights obtained can be used to reason about how tools and processes can be improved to better support collaboration throughout the development life-cycle.

Links & Downloads

1. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3219
2. Damian, D., Marczak, S., Kwan, I., Requirements Engineering in Global Teams, Global Software and IT: A Guide to Distributed Development, Rightshoring and Out sourcing, Ebert, C. (Ed.), IEEE Computer Society Press, Wiley, Los Alamitos, USA, 2011.
3. Damian, D., Kwan, I., Marczak, S., Requirements-Driven Collaboration: Leveraging the Invisible Relationships between Requirements and People, Collaborative Software Engineering, Mistrik, I., Grundy, J., van der Hoek, A, Whitehead, J. (Eds.), Chapter 3, pages 57-76, Springer-Verlag, Computer Science Editorial Series, London, England, March 2010.
4. Marczak, S., Kwan, I., Damian, D., ”Investigating Collaboration Driven by Requirements in Cross-Functional Teams”, in Proceedings of the Col laboration and Intercultural Issues on Requirements Communication, Understanding, and Softskills Workshop, in conjunction with the International Requirements Engineering Conference, Atlanta, United States, (available online), IEEE Computer Society, September 2009.
5. Marczak, S., Damian, D., Stege, U., Schroter, A., ”Information Brokers in Requirements- Dependency Social Networks”, in Proceedings of the International Requirements Engineering Conference, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 53-62, IEEE Computer Society, September 2008.
6. Marczak, S., Damian, D., Stege, U., Schroter, A., Kwan, I., ”Patterns of Information Flow in Interdependent-Requirements Social Networks and Implications for Requirements-Driven Collaboration”, in Proceedings of the Socio-Technical Congruence Workshop, in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering, Leipzig, Germany, (available online), IEEE Computer Society, May 2008.
7. Damian, D., Marczak, S., Kwan, I., ”Collaboration Patterns and the Impact of Dis- tance on Awareness in Requirements-Centred Social Networks”, in Proceedings of the International Requirements Engineering Conference, New Delhi, India, pp. 59-68, IEEE Computer Society, October 2007
8. Kwan, I., Damian, D., Marczak, S., ”The Effects of Distance, Experience, and Communication Structure on Requirements Awareness in Two Distributed Industrial Software Projects”, in Proceedings of the Global Requirements Engineering Workshop, in conjunction with the International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Munich, Germany, pp. 29-35, IEEE Computer Society, August 2007.
9. Marczak, S., Kwan, I., Damian, D., ”Social Networks in the Study of Collaboration in Global Software Teams”, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Munich, Germany, IEEE Computer Society, August 2007.
10. Kwan, I., Marczak, S., Damian, D., ”Viewing Pro ject Collaborators Who Work on Interrelated Requirements”, in Proceedings of the International Requirements Engineering Conference, New Delhi, India, pp. 369-370, IEEE Computer Society, October 2007.
11. Marczak, S., Stege, U., ”Graph Theory Applied to Social Networks on Requirements Engineering: An Investigation Based on an Industrial Case Study Conducted in Brazil”, Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, 19 pages, TR no. DCS-320-IR, December 2007.

Tags

requirements-driven collaboration

software engineering

communication

cross-functional teams

case study

Additional Fields

Identifer	oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3219
Date	22 February 2011
Creators	Marczak, Sabrina
Contributors	Damian, Daniela
Source Sets	University of Victoria
Language	English, English
Detected Language	English
Type	Thesis
Format	application/pdf
Rights	Available to the World Wide Web