Effects of Four Modes of Group Communication on the Outcomes of Software Requirements Determination

Ocker, Rosalie J.; Fjermestad, Jerry; Hiltz, Starr Roxanne; Johnson, Kenneth R.

doi:10.1080/07421222.1998.11518198

Cited by 100 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…A large number of empirical studies have been conducted in educational settings with students working on relatively realistic tasks (e.g., [12,23,24]). Educational settings allow for control of aspects such as setting the team configuration, task, and technology.…”

Section: Factors Affecting Virtual Teamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Munkvold

Zigurs

2007

Information & Management

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Virtual teams often face tight schedules and a need to start quickly and perform instantly. The goal of our study was to enhance understanding of the challenges faced by such teams. We used time-interaction-performance theory as the framework for following the processes and functions within virtual teams working on a systems development task. Our study provided a detailed examination of the group process, applied to virtual teams working under time pressure. The challenges faced by virtual teams in such settings showed that teams must work to enhance their effectiveness in multiple dimensions. #

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Section: Factors Affecting Virtual Teamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Munkvold

Zigurs

2007

Information & Management

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“…As a consequence, extensive research has been conducted on RD to improve the effectiveness of communication between stakeholders (Coughlan et al, 2003) through applying new approaches and models, such as different modes of group communication (Ocker, Fjermestad, Hiltz, & Johnson, 1998), or enhancing cognitive fit (Browne & Ramesh, 2002) or technique and methodology fit (Zowghi & Coulin, 2005). In much of this research, however, attention to analysts' communication skills, behaviors, and interactions with other stakeholders has been limited, while technical issues have received most attention.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Requirements Determination as a Social Practice: Perceptions and Preferences of Novice Analysts

Jebreen¹

2015

CIS

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At its core, Requirements Determination (RD) is fundamentally a collaborative social practice that involves multiple stakeholders who must work together to communicate, discuss and finally confirm the requirements for the system to be implemented or updated. With a potentially large number of (groups of) stakeholders involved, each with their own perspective on the system as well as their own level of understanding, the form and nature of communication in the RD process are worth investigating and improving, particularly given the impact of RD on other stages of software development, operation, and support. The many human interfaces associated with RD can lead to a variety of communication challenges, including miscommunication between users and analysts and misunderstandings between analysts and developers, all of which can add time and cost to software projects. In this paper we report on our use of the Communicative Adaptability Scale (CAS) questionnaire to assess the communicative competence of 45 novice analysts in social interaction. Through the questionnaire we have investigated the perceptions of analysts regarding the most effective channels through which to receive and send relevant RD information. Analysis leads us to confirm that first, face-to-face communication is the channel that our novice analysts prefer to employ in order to communicate with users during RD. Second, our novice analysts consider themselves to have the ability and desire to communicate in novel social contexts. The outcome of these experiences is the development and refinement of a social communication repertoire. Third, and less positively, our novice analysts consider themselves to have a lesser ability to engage in conversations with others who were not known previously. Furthermore, our analysis shows that our novice analysts perceive themselves to have limited competence to clearly express their ideas. Specifically, our analysts believe they have limited competence in word choice, pronunciation, and grammatical structure to express their ideas in a manner appropriate to the social context. Preferred channels of communication are confirmed, but their utility will be moderated by analysts' ability to interact in social settings. Additional training in communication skills, particularly articulation, may be of particular benefit to novice analysts.

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“…In our search for a suitable and established measure of consensus in business process modeling we have therefore turned our attention to another stream of research where group consensus is viewed in terms of solution satisfaction [27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

Section: Other Group Consensus Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Business Process Model Similarity as a Proxy for Group Consensus

Rittgen

2011

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract.Consensus is an important measure for the success of any business process modeling effort. Although intensively studied in the general literature on group processes, consensus has hardly been considered in business process modeling and never seriously measured. We define consensus as the level of agreement of group members' views on the process and introduce business process similarity as a proxy. We validate the measure by comparing it to an existing self-reported measure of consensus. Keywords:Business process modeling, model similarity, group consensus, mental model, view, visualization. IntroductionThe literature on business process modeling is vast and the importance of measuring the success of process modeling projects and sessions has been widely recognized [1][2][3][4][5][6]. But prevalent success measures for individual modeling sessions primarily involve some form of model quality measure [7][8][9][10]. While it is undisputed that the quality of a business process model is relevant to modeling success it is not the only and perhaps not even the most important success factor. The reason for this is twofold: the process model itself is a social construction, and its purpose is again to support some social process, e.g. a change project or system development project. In other words: the model documents the results of one social process (modeling) and serves as a point of departure for another one.If the model were to be processed by a computer its quality would be of prime importance to ensure correct interpretation by the machine. But the results that are documented in the model are primarily the mutual knowledge that has been developed in the modeling session, the conflicts that had to be solved on the way, and the consensus that has been achieved among the group members as a result.It is precisely this consensus that is a prerequisite for people's commitment to the ensuing change project, for example. Often a poor model with high consensus goes further than a good model with little consensus. Hence consensus is a major result that needs to be achieved in business process modeling sessions much like in many other forms of group work.

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Effects of Four Modes of Group Communication on the Outcomes of Software Requirements Determination

Cited by 100 publications

References 17 publications

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Requirements Determination as a Social Practice: Perceptions and Preferences of Novice Analysts

Business Process Model Similarity as a Proxy for Group Consensus

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