@article { ISI:000391839700001, title = {Are the expected benefits of requirements reuse hampered by distance? An experiment}, journal = {SPRINGERPLUS}, volume = {5}, year = {2016}, month = {DEC 20}, abstract = {Background: Software development processes are often performed by distributed teams which may be separated by great distances. Global software development (GSD) has undergone a significant growth in recent years. The challenges concerning GSD are especially relevant to requirements engineering (RE). Stakeholders need to share a common ground, but there are many difficulties as regards the potentially variable interpretation of the requirements in different contexts. We posit that the application of requirements reuse techniques could alleviate this problem through the diminution of the number of requirements open to misinterpretation. Results: This paper presents a reuse-based approach with which to address RE in GSD, with special emphasis on specification techniques, namely parameterised requirements and traceability relationships. An experiment was carried out with the participation of 29 university students enrolled on a Computer Science and Engineering course. Two main scenarios that represented co-localisation and distribution in software development were portrayed by participants from Spain and Morocco. The global teams achieved a slightly better performance than the co-located teams as regards effectiveness, which could be a result of the worse productivity of the global teams in comparison to the co-located teams. Subjective perceptions were generally more positive in the case of the distributed teams (difficulty, speed and understanding), with the exception of quality. Conclusions: A theoretical model has been proposed as an evaluation framework with which to analyse, from the point of view of the factor of distance, the effect of requirements specification techniques on a set of performance and perception-based variables. The experiment utilised a new internationalisation requirements catalogue. None of the differences found between co-located and distributed teams were significant according to the outcome of our statistical tests. The well-known benefits of requirements reuse in traditional co-located projects could, therefore, also be expected in GSD projects.}, issn = {2193-1801}, doi = {10.1186/s40064-016-3782-0}, author = {Carrillo de Gea, Juan M. and Nicolas, Joaquin and Fernandez-Aleman, Jose L. and Toval, Ambrosio and Idri, Ali} } @article { ISI:000372921700003, title = {Co-located and distributed natural-language requirements specification: traditional versus reuse-based techniques}, journal = {JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE-EVOLUTION AND PROCESS}, volume = {28}, number = {3}, year = {2016}, month = {MAR}, pages = {205-227}, abstract = {{Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co-located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse-based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance-based and perception-based variables in co-located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivity (Z=-2.320}, issn = {2047-7473}, doi = {10.1002/smr.1772}, author = {Carrillo de Gea, Juan M. and Nicolas, Joaquin and Fernandez Aleman, Jose L. and Toval, Ambrosio and Ouhbi, Sofia and Idri, Ali} } @article {11390487420160301, title = {Co-located and distributed natural-language requirements specification: traditional versus reuse-based techniques.}, journal = {Journal of Software: Evolution \& Process}, volume = {28}, number = {3}, year = {2016}, pages = {205 - 227}, abstract = {Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co-located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse-based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance-based and perception-based variables in co-located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivi}, keywords = {Computer software, Computer software development, experiment, global software development, internationalisation, Requirements engineering, requirements reuse, requirements specification, Software engineering, software engineering education, Specifications}, issn = {20477473}, url = {http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true\&db=iih\&AN=113904874\&site=ehost-live}, author = {de Gea, Juan M. Carrillo and Nicolas, Joaquin and Fernandez Aleman, Jose L. and Toval, Ambrosio and Ouhbi, Sofia and Idri, Ali} }