A Methodology for Reducing Geographical Dispersion Problems during Global Requirements Elicitation

Global Software Development (GSD) challenges current practices for requirements elicitation because some difficulties to achieve effective communication are aggravated by cultural diversity and the impossibility of having face-to-face meetings. Considering that effective communication would help reduce misunderstandings among stakeholders, and therefore help achieve more committed requirements, we propose here a methodology for global requirements elicitation focused on minimizing the most frequent problems in GSD. We introduce the proposal as well as the results of a controlled experiment, which show preliminary but promissory tendencies.