Culture and shared understanding in distributed requirements engineering

Developing requirements for large soft-ware systems requires continuous and effective coordination of tasks, resources, and people. Research in team cognition suggests that the traditional Input-Process-Output model is insufficient for the level of coordination needed in the development of such large systems. Coordination in these projects is greatly affected by human and behavioural factors, relying on developers having a shared understanding of both the system and the project. In globally distributed projects cultural diversity poses interesting challenges to the team's ability to form a shared understanding since developers from different cultures have disparate problem-solving and communication processes. This paper discusses an ongoing study on how culture affects the efforts through which requirements engineers, along with other members of the development team, acquire a shared understanding of both the system requirements and other issues such as project organization and progress. This paper explains the study's theoretical framework and outlines the more specific questions explored.