Comparing Software System Requirements Negotiation Patterns

Authors: Alexander Egyed and Barry Boehm

In a period of two years, two rather independent experiments were conducted at the University of Southern California (USC). In 1995, 23 three-person teams negotiated the requirements for a hypothetical library system. Then, in 1996, 14 six-person teams negotiated the requirements for real-world digital library systems.

A number of hypotheses were created to test how more realistic software projects differ from hypothetical ones. Other hypotheses address differences in uniformity and repeatability of negotiation processes and results. The results indicate that repeatability in 1996 was even harder to achieve then in 1995. Nevertheless, this paper presents some surprising commonalties between both years that indicate some areas of uniformity.

As such we found that the more realistic projects required more time to resolve conflicts and to identify options (alternatives) than the hypothetical ones. Further, the 1996 projects created more artifacts although they exhibited less artifact interconnectivity, implying a more divide and conquer negotiation approach. In terms of commonalties, we found that people factors such as experience did have effects onto negotiation patterns (especially in 1996), that users and customers were most significant (in terms of artifact creation) during the goal identification whereas the developers were more significant in identifying issues (conflicts) and options. We also found that both years exhibited some strange although similar disproportional stakeholder participation.

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