A Study of Requirements Negotiations in Virtual Project Teams

Recent advancements in communication systems enable the collaboration of virtual software design teams, breaking the barriers of time and distance. In this paper we address a critical aspect of the collaborative work of virtual project teams, the negotiation of requirements in software development. We present an exploratory study of the effects of multimedia communication systems on group negotiation performance and behavior. An emphasis is placed on the development of a research methodology that uses multiple methods in investigating a complex phenomenon. Contrary to the belief that face-to-face interaction increases performance, our laboratory findings suggest that groups in face-to-face meetings perform no better than video-conferenced groups; moreover, we identified a particular distributed virtual team configuration that was qualitatively more conducive to requirements negotiation than face-to-face meetings.

[1]  J. Walther.  Computer-Mediated Communication , 1996 .

[2]  Christine T. Kydd,et al.  Computer supported cooperative work tools and media richness: an integration of the literature , 1991, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[3]  John Short,et al.  The social psychology of telecommunications , 1976 .

[4]  S. Kiesler,et al.  Group and computer-mediated discussion effects in risk decision making. , 1987 .

[5]  M. Lynne Markus,et al.  The poverty of media richness theory: explaining people's choice of electronic mail vs. voice mail , 1997, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[6]  Alan R. Dennis,et al.  Reevaluating media richness: cues, feedback, and task , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[7]  M. Argyle,et al.  EYE-CONTACT, DISTANCE AND AFFILIATION. , 1965, Sociometry.

[8]  William N. Robinson,et al.  Negotiation behavior during requirement specification , 1990, [1990] Proceedings. 12th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[9]  Barry W. Boehm,et al.  Software requirements negotiation: some lessons learned , 1998, Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[10]  R. Bales,et al.  Symlog, A System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups , 1979 .

[11]  Ederyn Williams,et al.  Medium or Message: Communications Medium as a Determinant of Interpersonal Evaluation* , 1975 .

[12]  Sara Kiesler,et al.  Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication , 1984 .

[13]  Steve Easterbrook,et al.  Resolving requirements conflicts with computer-supported negotiation , 1994 .

[14]  Alphonse Chapanis,et al.  Interactive human communication , 1975 .