Lessons learned from integrating specification templates, collaborative workshops, and peer reviews

Abstract

[Context & motivation] Specifying requirements and ensuring their quality are critical for the success of software development projects. A variety of practices have been suggested to manage these activities, including specification templates, collaborative workshops, and peer reviews, but few empirical studies exist on their inter-connection. [Question/problem] We studied the lessons learned from integrating these three practices: "what are the problems faced with the use of the three practices?" and "what kind of approach supports the integrated use of the three practices?" [Principal ideas/results] In the Finnish companies included in the study, the key problems with the use of the three practices seemed to be the following: 1) the use of the three practices was typically inadequately established to meet the needs of the particular projects and 2) the requirements were communicated to key participants late and insufficiently. To avoid these types of problems, it was found useful to use the practices in an integrated manner, so that the forms of collaboration between key participants were determined and the appropriate types of practices were selected and tailored in a project-specific way. [Contribution] The paper describes the success factors of the integration. The setup workshop is introduced to support the tailoring and integration of the practices. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.