Collaboration Patterns and the Impact of Distance on Awareness in Requirements-Centred Social Networks

Abstract

Becauseof intense collaborative needs, requirements engineering is a challenge in global software development. How do distributed teams manage the development of requirements in environments that require significant cross-site collaboration and coordination? In this paper, we report research that used social network analysis to explore collaboration and awareness among team members during requirements management in an industrial distributed software team. Using the lens of a requirements-centred social network to group team members who work on a particular requirement, we collected data to characterize requirements-centric collaborations in a project, and to examine aspects of awareness of requirements changes within these networks.Our findings indicate organic patterns of collaboration involving considerable cross-site interaction, in which communication of changes was the most predominant reason for interaction. Although we did not find evidence that distance affects developers' awareness of remote team members who work on the same requirements, distance affected how accessible the remote colleagues were. We discuss implications for knowledge sharing and coordination of work on a requirement in distributed teams, and propose directions for the design of collaboration tools that support awareness in distributed requirements management.

Stakeholders' social interaction in requirements engineering of open source software

“…Damian et al [57] suggested that working on the same or interdependent requirements could be considered a means of stakeholders' social interaction. They presented the concept of requirements-centric social network (RCSN) by defining social networks among stakeholders working on the same or interdependent requirements [57].…”

“…They presented the concept of requirements-centric social network (RCSN) by defining social networks among stakeholders working on the same or interdependent requirements [57]. In order to identify and prioritize stakeholders and their requirements, Lim and colleagues [107] asked the already identified stakeholders to recommend other stakeholders and built social network based on their recommendations.…”

“…In RE, Marczak et al [125] used the term broker to refer to a stakeholder who works as a liaison between two teams working on two interdependent requirements. Marczak and colleagues [125] analyzed the requirements-centric social networks (RCSNs) [57] of development teams in a large IT manufacturing organization and explored the information flow patterns in teams coordinating works on interdependent requirements. According to their findings, brokers hold pockets of knowledge and appear as gatekeepers of information flow among teams working on interdependent requirements.…”

“…Damian et al [57] presented the concept of requirements-centric social network by defining social network among stakeholders working on same or interdependent requirements. Begel et al suggested that people could "be friends" by working on the artifacts they share among them [13].…”

Adopting a Social Network Perspective in Global Software Development

“…[34] note that "most of the bridges we have found in our research and in the literature are not ones that were developed intentionally as part of organization strategy, but units that have grown out of organizational need, or of the team positioning themselves in this role.". As an example in a study conducted among several distributed networks of people working on requirements engineering, results showed that on average, about one third of the team members were emergent roles [14]. In another study, it was observed that although teams were designed to communicate "freely", i.e.…”