Developing groupware for requirements negotiation: lessons learned - IEEE Software

0 7 4 0 7 4 5 9 / 0 1 / $ 1 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 1 I E E E with diverse expectations and interests. Requirements emerge in a highly collaborative, interactive, and interdisciplinary negotiation process that involves heterogeneous stakeholders. At the University of Southern California’s Center for Software Engineering, we have developed a series of groupware implementations for the WinWin requirements negotiation approach (see the Acknowledgments at the end of the article for a list of organizations that helped sponsor this research). The WinWin approach involves having a system’s success-critical stakeholders participate in a negotiation process so they can converge on a mutually satisfactory or win–win set of requirements. Groupware-supported methodologies are among the hardest to get right, and the rapidly moving technology of distributed interactive systems is a major challenge. This is due largely to the relative newness of the area and to the unfamiliarity of most software developers with the phenomena of group dynamics. However, an even bigger challenge is creating a system that works well with people of different backgrounds, in different places, and often at different times. In particular, collaborative technology that supports requirements negotiation must address stakeholder heterogeneity. Our WinWin groupware system—which has evolved over four generations—enables and facilitates heterogeneous stakeholder participation and collaboration. Each generation reflects an increase in our understanding of what is needed for successful WinWin groupware operations and technology support. Here, we present the major lessons we learned during WinWin’s development. focus