Groupware-assisted requirements assessment

Summary form only given, as follows. This report presents experiences in deploying groupware applications as a platform for facilitating the collection and analysis of requirements in large, geographically distributed organizations. Specifically, evidence from ongoing product development projects indicates that groupware-based requirement repositories contribute significantly to the efficiency of the earliest phases of requirements engineering. On the one hand, distributed repositories permit the solicitation of requirements from broad cross-departmental audiences. On the other hand, these repositories enhance the visibility of product requirements and allow requirements documentation to be analyzed in relation to the originating source information. Furthermore, by enhancing requirement repositories with sufficiently rich domain models of the organizational context, it becomes possible to automate the processes of seeking expert feedback to bear on the requirements under evaluation. Requirement repositories are also analyzed from the perspective of organizational memory, as these repositories have been found central in (1) impacting product knowledge on new personnel and (2) preserving the rationale behind product decisions.