The role of asynchronous discussions in increasing the effectiveness of remote synchronous requirements negotiations

ABSTRACT

Important and yet very difficult process in software development, requirements engineering is plagued with additional challenges in the emergent dynamics of geographically distributed software teams. Our hypothesis is that a mix of lean and rich communication media are needed towards increasing the effectiveness of meetings in reaching mutual agreement when stakeholders are geographically dispersed.We studied tool-supported remote inspections in six educational global project teams in a multicultural software development environment. In this paper we present the preliminary results from comparing the effectiveness of the requirements negotiations when preceded by the asynchronous discussions to those negotiations with no prior asynchronous discussions.

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INDEX TERMS

Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications
          Subjects: Tools

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.3 Organizational Impacts
          Subjects: Computer-supported collaborative work

General Terms:
Experimentation, Measurement, Theory

Keywords:
asynchronous communication, common ground, computer-mediated communication, requirements negotiation, software inspection