An empirical study of requirements engineering in distributed software projects: is distance negotiation more effective?

The software development world is experiencing an irreversible trend towards the globalization of business. This creates the need for a thorough understanding of collaborative activities such as requirements engineering and design of software in distributed development environments. The requirements conflicts and tradeoffs are critical aspects that occur throughout software development and we, as software engineers, need to better understand the technological impacts on the performance of groups resolving requirements issues in distributed development structures. In this paper lessons learned from an exploratory study of requirements meetings in which stakeholders participate from remote sites are reported. Evidence not only shows that distributed requirements engineering is supported by current multimedia meeting systems but also reveals aspects that enabled the distributed communication of stakeholders to be more effective in achieving agreements integrative of each stakeholder's interests and needs. Practical implications of the results and recommendations for the software industry in enabling effective distributed requirements meetings are outlined.