STAKEHOLDER COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AND REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING IN DISTRIBUTED AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY
Abstract
Stakeholder communication is recognized as a key factor in requirement engineering practices in distributed agile software development. Yet being distributed adds other factors such as geographical distance, time zone and cultural difference as well as using electronic means for communication. Such aspects could influence requirement elicitation, analysis, validation and documentation activities in software projects. This research explores stakeholder communication difficulties and their link with requirement engineering in distributed agile software development projects. We used a quantitative empirical method and gathered data from software development professionals such as developers, product owners, scrum masters and requirement engineers in distributed agile settings. The findings reveal a number of issues in communication and their association with requirement engineering. The results show the existence of several communication problems including asynchronous information sharing, requirement ambiguity, lack of synchronous communication, and stakeholder involvement. Differences in requirement clarity and comprehension were identified with respect to communication strategies used in distributed teams. Adoption of agile communication tools, communication protocols, and feedback practices were also investigated in the context of requirement engineering.
