COORDINATION AND COLLECTIVE MIND IN SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS DEVELOPMENT

The purpose of this study was to understand how the group processes of teams of software requirements analysts led to problems and to sugges t possible solutions. Requirements definition is important to establis h the framework for a development project. Researchers have proposed n umerous requirements development techniques, but less has been done on managing teams of requirements analysts. To learn more about group pr ocesses within such teams, we studied two teams of analysts developing requirements for large, complex real-time systems. These teams had pr oblems ensuring that requirements documents were complete, consistent, and correct; fixing those problems required additional time and effor t. To identify sources of problems, we applied two theories of collect ive action, coordination theory and collective mind theory. Coordinati on theory suggests that a key problem in requirement analysis is ident ifying and managing dependencies between requirements and among tasks. Most requirements methods and fools reflect this perspective, focusin g on better representation and communication of requirements. The coll ective mind perspective complements these suggestions by explaining ho w individuals come to understand how their work contributes to the wor k of the group. This perspective suggests that deficiencies in actors' representations of the process and subordination to collective goals limit the value of their contributions.