Michael Geisser

A method for collaborative requirements elicitation and decision-supported requirements analysis

As software systems become more and more complex with a multitude of stakeholders involved in development activities, novel ways of conducting the process of requirements elicitation and analysis are to be found. Therefore, this paper introduces a method for collaborative requirements elicitation and decision-supported requirements analysis. Accompanying this method, appropriate tools and techniques, both existing and custom-made, are referred to. The method is designed for a geographically distributed collaborative environment in order to support software manufacturers as well as IT departments which develop software solutions for multiple users or even consortiums of customers.

Approaches to Collaborative Software Development

Software development is becoming more and more complex. Traditionally and to date, the software development process rather corresponds to job-shop manufacturing. Therefore, the ever growing demands for different kinds of software as well as the ongoing globalization require more efficient development processes. Both scientific literature and practical experience hence postulate a necessary industrialization of software development and design of novel forms of specialization, task distribution, and collaboration. Existing approaches to collaborative software development can be classified and analyzed according to multiple categories. By evaluating these, current deficiencies are identified and discussed for further investigation.

Agile Methodologies for Distributed Collaborative Development of Enterprise Applications

Managing large distributed software projects for enterprise applications with traditional methodologies designed for collocated teams often leads to high planning and management overheads. The sequential and plan-driven traditional approaches often do not allow for an adequate reaction to changes in requirements. Today, Extreme Programming (XP) is the most popular agile development methodology. This paper analyzes how and to what extent XP can be transferred to distributed development projects for large enterprise applications. The focus is on XP in particular, since it is the most common agile methodology in practice and has the highest congruence to the original Agile Manifesto.

Evaluating collaboration platforms for offshore software development scenarios

Offshore software development has become one of the prominent software engineering trends in recent years. Many software development projects are switching to offshore sites due to global and economic reasons. This trend has resulted in the need for new tools and platforms to provide support for the challenges that are faced by collaborators in global teams in distributed communication, coordination and knowledge management. Understanding and employing appropriate platforms presents one of the important factors in successful global software development projects. The purpose of this paper is to compare several market-leading tools that aim at assisting software development within an offshore scenario. In doing so, new and important aspects of evaluating these tools are taken into account that are specific to the distributed aspects of these projects.

Offshore software development: transferring research findings into the classroom

Distributed software projects are becoming increasingly commonplace in industry. Yet, software engineering education rarely graduates students with the necessary skills and hands-on experience that are particular to off-shore software development projects. Three key areas in successful offshore software development projects are well documented in the literature as communication, knowledge management, as well as project and process management. This paper maps tasks within each of these three areas to functions that have to be provided by remote collaboration platforms and tools that distributed projects rely on. A case-study of an off-shore requirements engineering class experience between a Master course of Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and a customer in a Swiss financial institution shows a correlation between areas of learning by the students and functionalities covered with the tools used in the classroom. The paper identifies additional tools, developed by the authors, which will provide additional functionalities in the deficient areas to increase the learning and preparation of the students for off-shore software development projects.

An Evaluation Method for Requirements Engineering Approaches in Distributed Software Development Projects

The distribution of software engineering tasks is becoming ever more common. Requirements engineering, as the most critical phase, therefore requires methods and tools to support distributed teams. However, nearly all requirements engineering methods have originally been designed for collocated scenarios. Before applying these methods in distributed settings in practice and for scientific rigor, proper evaluation has to be conducted. Hence, we developed a methodologically sound and cost-effective evaluation method for distributed requirements engineering methods as well as the corresponding tool infrastructure for conducting evaluation projects.

Mobile Technologies in Requirements Engineering

This paper presents the current capabilities of mobile technologies to support the requirements engineering phase of software development projects. After a short insight into the state of the art of requirements engineering, different areas of application of mobile requirements engineering processes and tools - such as Arena-M or the Mobile Scenario Presenter - are being presented. The paper concludes with a critical statement regarding the benefit of current mobile tools in real-life requirements engineering.

Interview mit Klaus Haasis zum Thema

Klaus Haasis absolvierte von 1979 bis 1983 ein Ingenieurstudium an der heutigen Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart und von 1992 bis 1994 ein Journalistikstudium an der Universitat Hohenheim. Er war sieben Jahre fur die Hoechst AG in unterschiedlichen leitenden Funktionen des Medienmanagements tatig, 1990 ubernahm er die Geschaftfuhrung der SAT.1 Privatfernsehen Baden-Wurttemberg GmbH. Seit 1995 ist er Geschaftsfuhrer der MFG Baden-Wurttemberg mbH, die er zu einer international tatigen Innovationsagentur fur IT und Medien entwickelte. Hauptgesellschafter der MFG ist das Land BadenWurttemberg. Die MFG ist ISO-zertifziert fur Innovationsmanagement und Technologiebeziehungen. Haasis ist auserdem seit 1997 Geschaftsfuhrer von Baden-Wurttemberg: Connected (bwcon) e. V., einem der erfolgreichsten Branchennetzwerke in Europa, und seit 2005 Geschaftsfuhrer der Open-SourceInitiative Linux Solutions Group e. V.