Impact of Organizational Structure on Distributed Requirements Engineering Processes: Lessons Learned

Impact of Organizational Structure on Distributed Requirements Engineering Processes: Lessons Learned
Brian Berenbach
Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. 755 College Road East Princeton, New Jersey 08820 [phone]

[e-mail] ABSTRACT
The requirements engineering program at Siemens Corporate Research has been involved with process improvement, training and project execution across many of the Siemens operating companies. We have been able to observe and assist with process improvement in mainly global software development efforts. Other researchers have reported extensively on various aspects of distributed requirements engineering, but issues specific to organizational structure have not been well categorized. Our experience has been that organizational and other management issues can overshadow technical problems caused by globalization. This paper describes some of the different organizational structures we have encountered, the problems introduced into requirements engineering processes by these structures, and techniques that were effective in mitigating some of the negative effects of global software development. projects in the large, and specifically distributed requirements engineering efforts. The requirements engineering (RE) competency center at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton has had the unique opportunity to participate in large, global projects with different organizational structures. Each structure brought different challenges, benefits and issues. In the following sections, I will describe some of the structures we encountered, problems caused by the organizational structures, and, finally, I will suggest techniques for mitigating the problems encountered.

2. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
Organization in this paper has a very specific meaning. It refers to the leadership and/or management of a specific area. If for example, there are analysts at a remote site but they all report to and are managed by one

References: [1] Damian, D.E.H.; Eberlein, A.; Woodward, B.; Shaw, M.L.G.; Gaines, B.R., "An empirical study of facilitation of computer-mediated distributed requirements negotiations”, Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, 2001 , vol., no.pp.128-135, 2001 [2] Damian, D.E.; Eberlein, A.; Shaw, M.L.G.; Gaines, B.R., “An exploratory study of facilitation in distributed requirements engineering,” Requirements Engineering (2003), vol.8, no.1, p.23-41.