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May 8, 2005
“Communication Problems in Requirements Engineering: A Field Study”
This field study focuses on the communication characteristics of the requirements phase of a software project. The purpose of the study was to show that these projects have multiple problems in the communication between stakeholders and software engineers. In this case, the stakeholders can be seen as novice users while the requirements analysts can be seen as experts in their field. The three major communication barriers discussed deal with the “ineffectiveness of the current communication channels, restrictions on expressiveness imposed by notations, and the social and organizational barriers.” The study expresses that the one way communication channel, or “over-the-wall” method currently used in offices is hurting the flow of communication. Specification documentation is not adequate enough to communicate between phases of the software project. In addition, when asked if these documents were understandable by end users, a significant amount of experts expressed that their clients would need additional explanations in order to understand the notations that were given to them. Finally, organizational barriers arise when processes are divided into different phases and are performed by different groups. Managers chose these groups on a number of factors, rather than choosing them based on domain knowledge which is more ideal. Requirements committees are often composed of people with authority whom have limited knowledge of low-level tasks which require to be computerized. As a result of the study, it was determined that organizational and social issues posed the most important influence on communication problems in software engineering. It stresses that software professionals need to accommodate and identify these three different categories in their project management to determine the overall success or failure of the software project.
Posted by Jonathan at May 8, 2005 7:49 PM
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