Synchronous versus Asynchronous interaction between users of two collaborative tools for the production of Use Cases

The performance of requirement engineers in the production of Use Cases is analyzed and compared using a collaborative editor in synchronous mode versus one in asynchronous mode, with the objective to learn which mode allows generating better specification documents for specific software. For this purpose some Use Cases were produced under a quasi-experimental approach. There were proposed eleven metrics, used to evaluate the cases generated in both modes, according to some desirable features. The attained results show that the Use Cases asynchronously produced hold a better quality. On the other hand, the synchronouslygenerated Use Cases take less time in their production than the asynchronously-generated ones.