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Social & Cultural Issues in Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering involves social interactions between stakeholders and is impacted by cultural differences. There are six key social issue areas including within client organizations, between teams, and across cultures. Cultural differences like time zones, languages, and religions can cause misunderstandings and require understanding and respect. Requirements engineers must account for both social and cultural issues to successfully discover needs and define requirements.

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102 views

Social & Cultural Issues in Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering involves social interactions between stakeholders and is impacted by cultural differences. There are six key social issue areas including within client organizations, between teams, and across cultures. Cultural differences like time zones, languages, and religions can cause misunderstandings and require understanding and respect. Requirements engineers must account for both social and cultural issues to successfully discover needs and define requirements.

Uploaded by

Sam Man
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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SOCIAL & CULTURAL ISSUES IN REQUIREMENTS

ENGINEERING:

INTRODUCTION:
Some aspects of the requirements engineering process deal with social and cultural
issues
What is the best way to deal with these issues?
Some think that these issues fall outside the scope of requirements engineering
process, and fall under management, interpersonal skills, or ethics
Another point of view is that these issues are very much part of the requirements
engineering process and if not accounted for can negatively impact the desired
software system

SOCIAL ISSUES IN RE:

Social Issues in Requirement Engineering:

● Requirements engineering is a social process, as it involves interaction among


clients, engineers, and other systems
● Requirements engineering is not an entirely formal process, because it
involves discovering client needs and reconciling them with technical
possibilities

Stakeholders in RE Process

At least three major groups participate in requirements engineering process;


› The client organization
› The requirements team
› The development team
There may be other interested parties, e.g., regulatory authorities

Six Areas Of Social Issues


1. Within the client organization
2. Within the requirements team
3. Between the client and the requirements team
4. Between the development and requirements teams
5. Within the development team
6. Between the development team and the client
Issues within the Client Organization

● In a large organization, there are usually competing divisions or groups,


so the notion of ‘the client’ is not obvious.
● Intended users of the system may be different people from the ones
who interact with the requirements team
● The users of the system should be brought into the requirement
engineering process, as they hold the key of the eventual success of the
software engineering project
● The requirement process reveals the problems within the client
organization, which must be addressed by facilitating communication
among different stakeholders
● The problems within the client organization must not be buried, as they
affect the implementation of the project
● The new automated system may have profound impact on how the
business is conducted or how information is classified within the
organization
● Success of the project requires that every group within the organization
understand different aspects of the new system
● Problems of tacit knowledge
● › Say-do problem

Issues within the Requirements Team:


● How is work organized?
● What methods and notations are used?
● What do team members think about organization and how jelled
requirement teams are?

Issues between Client Organization and Requirements Team:


● Financial arrangements
● Ethical obligations
● Legal safeguards
● Personal relationships
● Denial of information
● Management of changes

Issues between Development and Requirement Teams:


● Development team needs to work very closely with the requirements
team to resolve inconsistencies and to get details
● In some cases, requirements team may be disbanded or assigned other
tasks
Issues of Development Team
● Team members may be demoralized
● There may be high turnover rate
● The deadlines may slip
● Developers dislike documentation
● Development teams may have to communicate with clients directly, to
gain better understanding of the project’s possibilities and limitations,
both for initial development and maintenance

CULTURAL ISSUES IN RE:

Cultural Issues in Requirement Engineering:

Advances in the internet and communication technologies has enabled customers


and developers to collaborate with each other in geographically and temporally
dispersed environments
There may be
● Time zones differences
● Language and terminology
● differences
● Religious and racial differences
● Ethical issues
● Political differences
● Differences in business environment

DIFFERENCES IN TIME ZONE:


● Working hours of clients and developers may differ by eight hours or more
● Arranging phone calls and video conferences become a hassle as one party
has to come to office very early or stay very late
● Analysts start assuming requirements

LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY DIFFERENCES:


● Clients and developers may speak different languages or different dialects
● Requirements errors are introduced by not understanding other partner’s
language and terminology properly

EXAMPLE: A BILLION
● Scientific community and US consider the following number to be a
billion
○ 1,00,00,00,000
● For the rest of the world, a billion is
○ 10,00,00,00,00,000
● Globally, people communicate with fellow citizens using sports lingo to convey
certain situations and concepts, even in the business environment
● This can cause misunderstandings
● Use of the word ‘hockey’ in Pakistan and US means two different sports: ‘field
hockey’ and ‘ice hockey’ respectively

RELIGIOUS AND RACIAL DIFFERENCES:


● Insensitive comments on religious and racial backgrounds of people involved
in software engineering projects can become a major hindrance in the
successful execution of the requirements engineering process

ETHICAL ISSUES:
● Access to confidential client information
● Possibility of elimination of jobs
● Differences of opinions with the client on the project

POLITICAL DIFFERENCES:
● Differences in political ideologies and personal convictions can also lead to
unprofessional environment in the execution of the requirements engineering
process
● Some people do not want to work on military software programs

DIFFERENCES IN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT:


● Every society has its own culture within the business community, which must
be understood for successful execution of the requirements engineering
process

ADDRESSING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES:


● Understand social and cultural issues and differences
● Avoid judgmental comments and offensive remarks on un-related views and
beliefs of others
● Create an environment of respect and professionalism
● Focus on discovering the needs of the customers
● Use state-of-the-art technology to facilitate activities in the requirements
engineering process
SUMMARY:

● Requirements engineering is not a strictly formal process, but one which has
social and cultural side effects
● Requirements engineers must understand different aspects of these issues
and address them in the requirements engineering process

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