Stakeholders in Global Requirements Engineering: Lessons Learned from Practice

Abstract

Due to its communication and collaboration-intensive nature, as well as inherent interaction with most other development processes, the practice of requirements engineering is becoming a key challenge in global software engineering (GSE). In distributed projects, cross-functional stakeholder groups must specify and manage requirements across cultural, time-zone, and organizational boundaries. This creates a unique set of problems, not only when an organization opens new development subsidiaries across the world but also when software development is a multiorganizational business affair. We need innovative processes and technologies to manage stakeholders' expectations and interaction in global projects. This article reports on the state of the practice, drawn from industrial empirical studies, of stakeholders' interaction in global RE. The article revisits stakeholders' needs in global RE, discusses the challenges they face in distributed interaction, and offers practical advice to alleviate these challenges, as distilled from empirical studies of GSE practice