Distributed Asynchronous Focus Group Interviews: Gathering Requirements from Distributed Stakeholders Using Asynchronous Focus Group Methodology

摘要

Globally distributed project teams are a more and more common trend in software development. Stakeholders and development teams of the same project are situated in different countries and time-zones. As a consequence, coordination between team members relies heavily on suitable online communication environments. This is especially the case during requirements elicitation, when requirements for a new system need to be identified. Most elicitation techniques require physical presence of stakeholders in order to be effective. This is not always possible in distributed project teams. The question is if and how traditional elicitation techniques can be adapted to distributed project settings. This paper proposes a concept to adapt a special elicitation technique - traditional face-to-face focus group interviews - to online focus group interviews. The concept proposes a discussion model based on a questionnaire that allows conducting asynchronous online focus groups in online environments as similar as possible to traditional face-to-face focus group discussions. Furthermore, a process model is introduced to plan and conduct asynchronous online focus groups. Finally, the paper discusses open issues of the concept that need further investigation.