Patterns of Collaboration Driven by Requirements in Agile Software Development Teams:Findings from a Multiple Case Study

摘要

Context and motivation: Due to their emphasis on communication, agile methods and requirements engineering activities seem to mutually support each other in software development. Question/Problem: But how do agile teams manage the collaboration required to perform requirements related activities, especially when their members work from geographically distributed locations? Principle Ideas/Results: In this paper we investigated the requirements-driven collaboration translated as communication and awareness among agile teams from four distributed projects. We identified some collaboration patterns that are similar to those reported in the literature for the traditional, non-agile teams, but also some more specific to agile teams. For instance, we found that the number of team members involved in actual collaboration is different than the number of assigned members, that little communication exists with members outside the team, and that project managers are still key players in knowledge sharing patterns. We also found that distance does not matter for knowledge management, that familiarity from past projects facilitates awareness, and communication is still an important source of awareness. Contributions: Our results suggest an exploration on the role of project managers as the key players in agile teams. Also, the correlation of distance and communication needs to be investigated in largely distributed agile teams.