Abstract
Context:
To software architects (SAs), the quality requirements (QRs) to a software system are key to designing the software architecture. However, understanding SAs' roles in the QRs engineering activities only recently became a topic in empirical requirements engineering research and very little is still known about QRs engineering from SAs' in large and distributed projects.
Goal:
This exploratory study aims at explicating how SAs are involved in engineering QRs in a specific distributed development setting, namely in organizations that distribute software development activities to closely located business units, known as near-shore development centres (NDCs), and in a specific geographic zone, namely Eastern Europe.
Method:
Based on interviews with 16 practitioners working on large projects in NDCs, we explicate the participation and involvement of NDCs' architects in QRs tasks. [Results] We found that SAs from NDCs (i) are actively involved in QRs documentation and validation, (ii) are relatively passive participants in QRs elicitation and prioritization, and (iii) are not at all involved in QRs negotiation. Perhaps, our most surprising finding is that NDCs may often have economic incentives to misalign with onshore QRs practices.
Conclusions:
We explicated QRs practices, compared them to previously published ones, and found implications for both researchers and practitioners. Though, our results are preliminary, as they are from an exploratory study.
Original language | Undefined |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2014 |
Editors | M. Torchiano |
Place of Publication | New York |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
Pages | 191-200 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-4503-2774-9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 19 Sep 2014 |
Event | 8th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2014 - Torino, Italy Duration: 18 Sep 2014 → 19 Sep 2014 Conference number: 8 http://softeng.polito.it/ESEIW2014/ESEM/ |
Publication series
Name | |
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Publisher | ACM |
Conference
Conference | 8th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2014 |
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Abbreviated title | ESEM 2014 |
Country | Italy |
City | Torino |
Period | 18/09/14 → 19/09/14 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- SCS-Services
- EWI-25412
- Quality Requirements
- Software Architecture
- METIS-309719
- Near-shore development centers
- Interview-based research method
- IR-94329
- Exploratory case study
- Distributed software development