Using the affect grid to measure emotions in software requirements engineering

Computer systems are designed and used by humans. And human being is characterized, among other things, by emotions. Giving this fact, the process of designing and developing computer systems is, like any other facet in our lives, driven by emotions. Requirements engineering is one of the main phases in software development. In Requirements engineering, several tasks include acceptance and negotiation activities in which the emotional factor represents a key role. This paper presents a study based on the application of affect grid by Russell in requirements engineering main stakeholders: developers and users. Results show that high arousal and low pleasure levels in the process are predictors of conflictive requirements.Publicad

Decisions in software development proyects management: an exploratory study.

Given the importance of software in today's world, the development of software systems is a key activity that requires complex management scenarios. This article explores the implications of hard decisions in the context of software development projects (SDPs). More in deep, it focuses on the emotional consequences of making hard decisions in IT organisations. Complex SDPs involve a great variety of actors. This fact entails morale, feelings and emotions, which play an important role for communication, interaction and, ultimately, decision making. The aim of the article is twofold. First (Study 1), to identify which are the most important hard decisions in SDPS. Second (Study 2), to study the influence of emotions on decision-making processes (Study 2). Findings show the complex emotional consequences and difficulties that managers must face in hard decision-making processes.Publicad

Power and politics in requirements engineering: embracing the dark side?

This vision paper considers the role of power and politics in requirements engineering (RE). It offers a working definition of both terms and reviews the existing literature both in RE and related disciplines. It argues that, given the increased complexity, uncertainty and organisational embeddedness faced by RE in practice, power and politics have become increasingly relevant factors that have not been adequately considered. Building upon recent relevant research, a research agenda is proposed that presents a methodological framework which examines power and politics through the structure of power relations and the process of decision-making. This framework will require validation through empirical research as a first step to developing models of power and politics that could be of practical use for RE. Although the potential problems faced by the study of power and politics in an RE context are acknowledged, it is argued that the potential benefits could be significant

Coding vs presenting: a multicultural study on emotions

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare emotions perceived while coding and presenting for software students, comparing three different countries and performing also a gender analysis. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical data are gathered by means of the discrete emotions questionnaire, which was distributed to a group of students (n = 174) in three different countries: Norway, Spain and Turkey. All emotions are self-assessed by means of a Likert scale. Findings: The results show that both tasks are emotionally different for the subjects of all countries: presentation is described as a task that produces mainly fear and anxiety; whereas coding tasks produce anger and rage, but also happiness and satisfaction. With regards to gender differences, men feel less scared in presentation tasks, whereas women report more desire in coding activities. It is concluded that it is important to be aware and take into account the different emotions perceived by students in their activities. Moreover, it is also important to note the different intensities in these emotions present in different cultures and genders. Originality/value: This study is among the few to study emotions perceived in software work by means of a multicultural approach using quantitative research methods. The research results enrich computing literacy theory in human factors

The Influence of Analyst Communication in IS Projects

Information system (IS) researchers have long noted that IS analysts need to understand users’ needs if they are to design better systems and improve project outcomes. While researchers agree that analyst communication activities are an important prerequisite for such an understanding, little is known about the nature of different communication behaviors IS analysts can undertake to learn about users’ system needs and the impact of such behaviors on IS projects. To address this gap, this paper draws from the learning literature to articulate the information transmission activities IS analysts can undertake and the content of the information they can transmit when learning about users’ organizational tasks and information needs. The influence of analyst communication activities on the generation of valid information regarding user needs, analyst learning, and IS project outcomes are then investigated via a case study of two IS projects. The analysis of the two cases suggests that analysts who encourage the use of concrete examples, testing, and validation, and who solicit feedback about users’ business processes are likely to better understand users’ tasks, and in turn design systems that better meet users’ task needs than analysts who do not

Experience requirements

Video game development is a high-risk effort with low probability of success. The interactive nature of the resulting artifact increases production complexity, often doing so in ways that are unexpected. New methodologies are needed to address issues in this domain. Video game development has two major phases: preproduction and production. During preproduction, the game designer and other members of the creative team create and capture a vision of the intended player experience in the game design document. The game design document tells the story and describes the game - it does not usually explicitly elaborate all of the details of the intended player experience, particularly with respect to how the player is intended to feel as the game progresses. Details of the intended experience tend to be communicated verbally, on an as-needed basis during iterations of the production effort. During production, the software and media development teams attempt to realize the preproduction vision in a game artifact. However, the game design document is not traditionally intended to capture production-ready requirements, particularly for software development. As a result, there is a communications chasm between preproduction and production efforts that can lead to production issues such as excessive reliance on direct communication with the game designer, difficulty scoping project elements, and difficulty in determining reasonably accurate effort estimates. We posit that defining and capturing the intended player experience in a manner that is influenced and informed by established requirements engineering principles and techniques will help cross the communications chasm between preproduction and production. The proposed experience requirements methodology is a novel contribution composed of: a model for the elements that compose experience requirements, a framework that provides guidance for expressing experience requirements, and an exemplary process for the elicitation, capture, and negotiation of experience requirements. Experience requirements capture the designer' s intent for the user experience; they represent user experience goals for the artifact and constraints upon the implementation and are not expected to be formal in the mathematical sense. Experience requirements are evolutionary in intent - they incrementally enhance and extend existing practices in a relatively lightweight manner using language and representations that are intended to be mutually acceptable to preproduction and to production

Increasing the Semantic Similarity of Object-Oriented Domain Models by Performing Behavioral Analysis First

The main goal of any object-oriented analysis (OOA) method is to produce a model that aids in understanding and communicating knowledge about a modeled domain. A higher degree of similarity among independently produced domain models provides an indication of how well the domain was understood by the different analysts, i. e. , more similar models indicate a closer and a more common understanding of a domain. A common understanding is of critical importance for effective knowledge communication and sharing. The core of any OOA method is discovering and understanding concepts and their relationships in a domain. The main artifact produced by an OOA method is a domain model of the domain. A domain model often serves as the main source of design concepts during objectoriented design (OOD). This thesis evaluates two OOA methods by comparing the degree of similarity of the resulting domain models. In particular, this work compares the semantic similarity of domain models extracted from use cases by specification of sequence diagrams and then domain models, and specification of unified use case statecharts and then domain models. The thesis makes case studies out of the application of the first method to 31 instances of large Voice-over-IP (VoIP) system and its information management system (IMS) and to 3 small elevator systems, and out of the application of the second method to 46 instances of the same large VoIP system and its IMS and to 12 instances of a medium-sized elevator system. From an analysis of data from these case studies, the thesis concludes that there is an increase of 10% in the semantic similarity of domain models produced using the second method, but at the cost of less than or equal to 25% more analysis time

Liiketoiminnan ja IT järjestelmien yhteiskehittäminen tietojärjestelmävaatimusten määrittelyvaiheessa

New and old information systems are being developed everyday. Still, most of the information systems do not meet customers’ needs: information system reliability, usability, and suitability for the task are not adequate. Information system developers and customers do not understand each others’ work processes and world views enough to be able to communicate sufficiently. Thus, the voice of the customers is often not heard or understood during the information system development process. Requirements elicitation is the first and a critical phase in the systems design process. If the right requirements are captured during this phase, there is a higher potential for the system to satisfy the customers’ needs. This study answers to the research question: how can business and IT systems be co-designed during requirements elicitation? Two sub-questions of this study are: What are the interdependencies between information system provider and customer during requirements elicitation? How should the interdependencies between information system provider and customer during requirements elicitation be coordinated? The literature of the study consists of information system development and coordination theories. Requirements engineering, communication, and involvement of customers theories are important parts of the literature. The thesis includes three case studies including action research. The case studies are about the requirements elicitation phase of an already existing, large financial information system development project. The Finnish information system provider wanted to elicit the requirements for the information system together with the customers: three bank groups. The cases took place between August 2006 and November 2007. Action research was carried out applying SimLab’s business process development method. Data was collected by interviews (28 people), process modeling sessions and simulation day discussions, two questionnaires, feedback forms, and observation. The results of the thesis are summarized into a conceptual framework that describes the process of co-designing business and IT systems during requirements elicitation. The process consists of three steps: 1) sharing IT and business knowledge through process modeling and simulations, 2) creating common understanding about common work processes and IS and business requirements, and 3) agreeing upon the coordination methods to be used during requirements elicitation and applying them. In addition, the findings suggest a new interdependency, named systemic interdependency, to coordination literature. Systemic interdependency is suggested to be coordinated by a new coordination mode, facilitated mutual adjustment.Uusia ja vanhoja tietojärjestelmiä kehitetään jatkuvasti. Silti ne eivät tunnu vastaavan asiakkaiden tarpeita. Järjestelmät eivät ole riittävän luotettavia, helposti käytettäviä eivätkä sovellu työtehtävän suorittamiseen. Tietojärjestelmäkehittäjät ja asiakkaat eivät ymmärrä toistensa työprosesseja ja ajatusmalleja, jotta voisivat keskustella asioista riittävästi. Tämän takia asiakkaan ääntä ei yleensä kuunnella tai ymmärretä tietojärjestelmän kehittämisprosessin aikana. Vaatimusten määrittely on ensimmäinen ja kriittinen vaihe tietojärjestelmäkehitysprosessissa. Jos oikeat vaatimukset järjestelmälle löydetään tässä vaiheessa, järjestelmällä on paremmat mahdollisuudet täyttää asiakkaiden vaatimukset. Tämä tutkimus vastaa tutkimuskysymykseen: miten liiketoimintaa ja tietojärjestelmiä voidaan kehittää yhdessä tietojärjestelmävaatimusten määrittelyvaiheessa? Tutkimuksen alakysymykset ovat: Mitkä ovat tietojärjestelmätoimittajan ja asiakkaan väliset riippuvuudet vaatimusmäärittelyvaiheessa? Miten tietojärjestelmätoimittajan ja asiakkaan välisiä riippuvuuksia pitäisi koordinoida vaatimusmäärittelyn yhteydessä? Tutkimuksen kirjallisuustutkimus kohdistuu tietojärjestelmäkehityksen ja koordinoinnin teorioihin sekä vaatimusmäärittelyn, viestinnän ja asiakkaiden osallistamisen tutkimukseen. Työn empiirinen osuus käsittää kolme tapaustutkimusta, jotka toteutettiin toimintatutkimuksena. Kaikissa kolmessa tapaustutkimuksessa kehitettiin olemassa olevaa, isoa finanssialan tietojärjestelmää sen kehitysprojektin vaatimusmäärittelyvaiheessa. Suomalainen tietojärjestelmätoimittaja halusi selvittää tietojärjestelmävaatimukset yhdessä asiakkaidensa, kolmen pankkiryhmän kanssa. Tapaukset tutkittiin elokuun 2006 ja marraskuun 2007 välisenä aikana. Toimintatutkimus tapahtui SimLab™ liiketoimintaprosessien kehitysmenetelmän avulla. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin haastatteluin (28 henkilöä), prosessimallinnus- ja simulointikeskustelujen, kahden kyselyn, palautelomakkeiden ja havainnoinnin avulla. Tutkimuksen tuloksena esitetään käsitteellinen prosessimalli liiketoiminnan ja tietojärjestelmien yhteiskehittämiselle vaatimusmäärittelyvaiheessa. Malli koostuu kolmesta vaiheesta: 1) tietotekniikka- ja liiketoimintatietämyksen jakaminen liiketoimintaprosessien mallinnusten ja -simulointien avulla, 2) yhteisen ymmärryksen rakentaminen koskien työprosesseja ja liiketoiminta- ja tietojärjestelmävaatimuksia ja 3) yhteinen sopiminen vaatimusmäärittelyn aikana käytettävistä koordinointikeinoista ja näiden keinojen soveltaminen. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa löydetään uusi tehtävien välinen riippuvuus, jota kutsutaan systeemiseksi riippuvuudeksi. Tätä koordinointikirjallisuudelle uutta riippuvuutta esitellään koordinoitavaksi uudella koordinointikeinolla, jota kutsutaan fasilitoiduksi molemminpuoliseksi mukautumiseksi

Metodología de implantación de modelos de gestión de la información dentro de los sistemas de planificación de recursos empresariales. Aplicación en la pequeña y mediana empresa

La Siguiente Generación de Sistemas de Fabricación (SGSF) trata de dar respuesta a los requerimientos de los nuevos modelos de empresas, en contextos de inteligencia, agilidad y adaptabilidad en un entono global y virtual. La Planificación de Recursos Empresariales (ERP) con soportes de gestión del producto (PDM) y el ciclo de vida del producto (PLM) proporciona soluciones de gestión empresarial sobre la base de un uso coherente de tecnologías de la información para la implantación en sistemas CIM (Computer-Integrated Manufacturing), con un alto grado de adaptabilidad a la estnictura organizativa deseada. En general, esta implementación se lleva desarrollando hace tiempo en grandes empresas, siendo menor (casi nula) su extensión a PYMEs. La presente Tesis Doctoral, define y desarrolla una nueva metodología de implementación pan la generación automática de la información en los procesos de negocio que se verifican en empresas con requerimientos adaptados a las necesidades de la SGSF, dentro de los sistemas de gestión de los recursos empresariales (ERP), atendiendo a la influencia del factor humano. La validez del modelo teórico de la metodología mencionada se ha comprobado al implementarlo en una empresa del tipo PYME, del sector de Ingeniería. Para el establecimiento del Estado del Arte de este tema se ha diseñado y aplicado una metodología específica basada en el ciclo de mejora continua de Shewhart/Deming, aplicando las herramientas de búsqueda y análisis bibliográfico disponibles en la red con acceso a las correspondientes bases de datos