Abstract
This paper presents a narrative-based Requirements Engineering (RE) mediation model to help RE practitioners to effectively identify, define, and resolve conflicts of interest, goals, and requirements. Within the SPI community, there is a common belief that social, human, and organizational issues significantly impact on the effectiveness of software process improvement in general and the requirements engineering process in particularl. Conflicts among different stakeholders are an important human and social issue that need more research attention in the SPI and RE community. By drawing on the conflict resolution literature and IS literature, we argue that conflict resolution in RE is a mediated process, in which a requirements engineer can act as a mediator among different stakeholders. To address socio-psychological aspects of conflict in RE and SPI, Winslade and Monk (2000)’s narrative mediation model is introduced, justified, and translated into the context of RE.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Pruitt, D.G., Kim, S.H.: Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York (2004)
Sommerville, I., Sawyer, P.: Requirements Engineering: A Good Practice Guide. Wiley, Chichester (1997)
Easterbrook, S.M.: Resolving Requirements Conflicts with Computer-Supported Negotiation. In: Jirotka, M., Goguen, J. (eds.) Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues, pp. 41–65. Academic Press, London (1996)
Nuseibeh, B.: To Be And Not To Be: On Managing Inconsistency in Software Development. In: Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (IWSSD-8), Scloss Velen, Germany, 22-23 March 1996, pp. 164–169. IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos (1996)
Van Lamsweerde, A.: Requirements Engineering in the Year 2000: A Research perspective. In: Invited Paper for ICSE 2000 - 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, Limerick, June 2000. ACM Press, New York (2000)
Jackson, M.: Problem Frames: Analysing and Structuring Software Development Problems. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Amsterdam (2001)
Yu, E., Mylopoulos, J.: Why Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering. In: Dubois, E., Opdahl, A., Pohl, K. (eds.) Fourth International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 1998), Pisa, Italy (1998)
Robinson, W.N.: Negotiation Behaviour During Multiple Agent Specification: A Need for Automated Conflict Resolution. In: Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE-12), Nice, France, March 1990, pp. 268–276. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1990)
Boehm, B., Grünbacher, P., Briggs, R.: Developing Groupware for Requirements Negotiation: Lessons Learned. IEEE Software 18(3) (2001)
Damian, D.E., Shaw, M.L.G., Gaines, B.R., Zowghi, D.: A multi-disciplinary approach to the study of distributed requirements negotiations. In: Proc. of the 5th Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering, Brisbane, Australia, December 8-9, pp. 91–100 (2000)
Damian, D.E.: A research methodology in the study of requirements negotiations in geographically distributed software system. In: Proceedings of 11 the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (2003)
Barki, H., Hartwick, J.: Interpersonal conflict and its management in information system development. MIS Quarterly 25(2), 195–228 (2001)
Winslade, J., Monk, G.: Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution Jossey-Bass (2000)
Robertson, M., Swan, J., Newell, S.: The role of networks in the diffusion of technological innovation. Journal of manage studies 33(3), 335–26 (1996)
Ma, N., Hall, T., Barker, T.: Using an expert panel to validate a Requirements Engineering Mediation Model. In: EASE 2008 conference, Italy, 26 (June 2008) (submitted, 2008)
Macaulay, L.: Requirements engineering, London, UK. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Hoffmann, O., Cropley, D., Cropley, A., Nguyen, L., Swatman, P.: Creativity, Requirements, and Perspectives. Australian Journal of Information Systems 13(1), 159–175 (2005)
Nguyen, L., Swatman, P.: Promoting and Supporting Requirements Engineering Creativity. In: Dutoit, A.H., McCall, R., Mistrik, I., Paech, B. (eds.) Rationale Management in Software Engineering, ch. 10. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Nuseibeh, B., Easterbrook, S.: Requirements Engineering: A Roadmap. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE-2000), Limerick, Ireland, 4-11 June (2000)
Ian, S.: Integrated Requirements Engineering: A Tutorial. IEEE Software 22(1): 16-23, 2005
Beck, K.: Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Addison Wesley, Reading (2000)
Cohn, M.: User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2004)
Curtis, B., Krasner, H., Iscoe, N.: A field study of the software design process for large systems. Communications of the ACM 31(11), 1268–1287 (1988)
Maiden, N., Bright, B.P.: Recurrent communication patterns in requirements engineering meetings. In: WETICE 1996, pp. 208–213 (1996)
Constantine, L.L., Lockwood, L.A.D.: Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Essential Models and Methods of Usage-Centered Design. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1999)
Burroway, J.: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1999)
Fellows, L., Hooks, I.: A Case for Priority Classifying Requirements. In: Eighth Annual International Symposium on Systems Engineering, Seattle, Washington, International Council on Systems Engineering (1998)
Davis, A.: The Art of Requirements Triage. Computer 36(3), 42–49 (2003)
Wiegers Karl, E.: First Things First: Prioritizing Requirements. Software Development 7(9) (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ma, N., Hall, T., Barker, T. (2008). Building a Narrative Based Requirements Engineering Mediation Model. In: O’Connor, R.V., Baddoo, N., Smolander, K., Messnarz, R. (eds) Software Process Improvement. EuroSPI 2008. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 16. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85936-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85936-9_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85934-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85936-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)