Expanding the horizons of requirements engineering: examining requirements during groupware tool diffusion

We examine how a groupware tool diffusion process can be explained in terms of applied requirements analysis. To do this, we discuss a long-term case study of how a groupware tool was diffused throughout a large aerospace organization via a grassroots process. We examine the groupware tool diffusion process in detail while noting where requirements enabled or inhibited tool adoption. We observed that the initial diffusion occurred in different social worlds, i.e. internal collectives of people with common work practices, within the organization. We describe how requirements that are present in overlaps between different social worlds accelerate the diffusion of the groupware tool eventually to the point of reaching "critical mass" acceptance, i.e. adoption of tools by the organizational as a whole. From an examination of the observed process, we determine and discuss seven lessons learned for applying requirements analysis to technology diffusion.