An empirical study of the impact of asynchronous discussions on remote synchronous requirements meetings

Abstract

Our research explores the combination of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration tools for global software development. In this paper we assess the impact of tool-mediated inspections to improve requirements negotiation meetings with stakeholders spread over different continents. We present the design of our investigation in an educational environment, in a course where the clients and developers in a software project were in geographically distributed locations. In particular, we studied the usefulness of asynchronous discussions in IBIS tool in enabling more effective requirements negotiations meetings. Our findings indicate that the requirements negotiations were more effective when the groups conducted asynchronous discussions prior to the synchronous negotiation meetings. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.