Attributes of open source software requirements - The effect of the external environment and internal social structure

Deepa Gopal, Aron Lindberg, Kalle Lyytinen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Popularity of open source software (OSS) projects has spiked an interest in the requirements engineering (RE) practices of such communities that are starkly different from those in traditional software development projects. Past work has focused on characterizing the main differences between OSS and traditional forms of software RE. In this effort we focus on differences in RE activity in OSS. RE is characterized as a socio-technical distributed cognitive (DCog) activity where multiple actors deploy artifacts to 'compute' requirements. To uncover how OSS projects configure the socio-technical distribution of cognitive processes to respond to varying attributes of incoming requirements we conduct a comparative analysis of four successful OSS projects. We observe that the volume of requirements faced by an OSS group dictates largely the nature of its social formation while the volatility experienced in the requirements dictates the overlap the project exhibits with the larger external community. Finally the velocity of change in technological requirements influence the project's documentation practices of requirements with the level of design consistency desired in the end product influencing the decision-making channels used in the development endeavor.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2016
EditorsRalph H. Sprague, Tung X. Bui
Pages4982-4991
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9780769556703
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Mar 2016
Event49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2016 - Koloa, United States
Duration: 5 Jan 20168 Jan 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Volume2016-March
ISSN (Print)1530-1605

Conference

Conference49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityKoloa
Period5/01/168/01/16

Keywords

  • Comparative case study
  • Distributed cognition
  • External environment
  • Open source software
  • Qualitative
  • Requirement attributes
  • Social distribution
  • Structural distribution

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