Abstract
In this chapter we introduce requirements-driven collaboration, which is the collaboration of a cross-functional team of business analysts, designers, developers and testers during the development and management of requirements. We describe an approach that (1) constructs a requirement-centric social network which represents the membership and relationships among members working on a requirement and its associated downstream artifacts and (2) outlines a number of social network analysis techniques to study collaboration aspects such as communication, awareness , and the alignment of technical dependencies driven by development of requirements and social interactions. To demonstrate our approach, we discuss a case study that examines requirements-driven collaboration within an industrial, globally-distributed software team. Finally, we discuss implications regarding the use of our requirements-driven collaboration approach for research and practice.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Al-Rawas A, Easterbrook S (1996) Communication problems in requirements engineering: A field study. Conference on Awareness in Software Engineering, London, pp. 47–60.
Bettenburg N, Just S, Schröter A, Weiss C, Premraj R, Zimmermann T (2008) What makes a good bug report? International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, Atlanta, USA, pp. 308–318.
Cataldo M, Wagstrom PA, Herbsleb JD, Carley KM (2006) Identification of coordination requirements: Implications for the design of collaboration and awareness tools. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Banff, Canada, pp. 353–362.
Cleland-Huang J, Settimi R, Zou X, Solc P (2006) The detection and classification of non-functional requirements with application to early aspects. International Requirements Engineering Conference, Minneapolis, USA, pp. 36–45.
Cooke NJ, Salas E, Cannon-Bowers JA, Stout Re (2000) Measuring team knowledge. Human Factors 42(1): 151–173.
Coughlan J, Lycett M, Macredie RD (2003) Communication issues in requirements elicitation: A content analysis of stakeholder experiences. Information and Software Technology 45(8): 525–537.
Curtis B, Krasner H, Iscoe N (1988) A field study of the software design process for large systems. Communication of ACM 31(11): 1268–1287.
Dahlstedt AG, Persson A (2006) Requirements Interdependencies: State of the Art and Future Challenges. Berlin: Springer.
Damian D, Izquierdo L, Singer J, Kwan I (2007) Awareness in the wild: Why communication breakdowns occur. International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Munich, Germany, pp. 81–90.
Damian D, Marczak S, Kwan I (2007) Collaboration patterns and the impact of distance on awareness in requirements-centered social networks. International Requirements Engineering Conference, New Delhi, India, pp. 59–68.
Damian DE, Zowghi D (2003) Requirements engineering challenges in multi-site software development organizations. Requirements Engineering Journal 8: 149–160.
de Souza CRB, Redmiles D (2007) The awareness network: To whom should I display my actions? and, whose actions should I monitor? European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland, pp. 99–117.
Ehrlich K, Chang K (2006) Leveraging expertise in global software teams: Going outside boundaries. International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Florianópolis, Brazil, pp. 149–158.
Ehrlich K, Helander M, Valetto G, Davies S, Williams C (2008) An analysis of congruence gaps and their effect on distributed software development. Socio-Technical Congruence Workshop at ICSE 2008, Leipzig, Germany.
Emam KE, Madhavji NH (1995) A field study of requirements engineering practices in information systems development. International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pp. 68–80.
Espinosa JA, Slaughter SA, Kraut RE, Herbsleb JD (2007) Team knowledge and coordination in geographically distributed software development. Journal of Management Information Systems 24(1): 135–169.
Freeman LC, Roeder D, Mulholland RR (1979/1980) Centrality in social networks: II. Experimental results. Social Networks 2(2): 119–141.
Gould RV, Fernandez RM (1989) Structures of mediation: A formal approach to brokerage in transaction networks. sociological methodology 19: 89–126.
Herbsleb DJ (2007) Global software engineering: The future of socio-technical coordination. Future of Software Engineering at ICSE 2007, Minneapolis, USA, pp. 188–198.
Herbsleb JD, Klein H, Olson GM, Brunner H, Olson JS, Harding J (1995) Object-oriented analysis and design in software project teams. Human-Computer Interaction 10(2/3): 249–293.
Herbsleb JD, Mockus A (2003) An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 29(6): 481–494.
Hinds P, McGrath C (2006) Structures that work: Social Structure, work structure and coordination ease in geographically distributed teams. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Banff, Canada, pp. 343–352.
Hossain L, Wu A, Chung KKS (2006) Actor centrality correlates to project based coordination. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Banff, Canada.
Krackhardt D (1987) QAP partialling as a test of spuriousness. Social Networks 9: 171–186.
Macaulay LA (1996) Requirements Engineering. London: Springer-Verlag.
Malone TW, Crowston K (1994) The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys 26(1): 87–119.
Marczak S, Damian D, Stege U, Schröter A (2008) Information brokers in requirement-dependent social networks. International Requirements Engineering Conference, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 53–62.
Perry DE, Staudenmayer NA, Votta LG (1994) People, organizations, and process improvement. IEEE Software 11(4): 36–45.
Potts C, Catledge L (1996) Collaborative conceptual design: A large software project case study. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 5(4): 415–445.
Rulke DL, Galaskiewicz J (2000) Distribution of knowledge, group network structure, and group performance. Management Science 46(5): 612–625.
Sarma A, van der Hoek A (2006) Toward awareness in the large. International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Florianópolis, Brazil. October, pp. 127–131.
Valetto G, Helander M, Ehrlich K, Chulani S, Wegman M, Williams C (2007) Using software repositories to investigate socio-technical congruence in development projects. Mining Software Repositories at ICSE 2007, Minneapolis, USA.
Ven AHVD, Delbecq AL, Richard Koenig J (1976) Determinants of coordination modes within organizations. Americal Sociological Review 41(2): 322–338.
Wasserman S, Faust K (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Watts DJ (2003) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: Norton.
Whitehead J (2007) Collaboration in software engineering: A roadmap. Future of Software Engineering. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 214–225.
Wolf T, Schröter A, Damian D, Panjer L, Nguyen T (2009) Mining task-based social networks to explore collaboration in software teams. IEEE Software 26: 58–66.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Damian, D., Kwan, I., Marczak, S. (2010). Requirements-Driven Collaboration: Leveraging the Invisible Relationships between Requirements and People. In: MistrÃk, I., Grundy, J., Hoek, A., Whitehead, J. (eds) Collaborative Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10293-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10294-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)