Openess and Requirements Engineering in Software Ecosystems

Recent research has regarded the development of large scale software projects as ecosystems of interacting and interconnected organizations. Stakeholders internal or external to product teams collaborate and provide input towards the criticality or usefulness of product features. 

We studied the ecosystem around the development of the Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) product at IBM. We used multiple methods for data collection, including interviews within several ecosystem actors, on-site participatory observation, and analysis of online project repositories. We described the flow of product requirements information through the ecosystem, how the open communication paradigm in software ecosystems provides opportunities for ’justin-time’ RE – and which relies on emergent contributions from the ecosystem stakeholders –, as well as some of the challenges faced when traditional requirements engineering approaches are applied within such an ecosystem. We identified two tradeoffs brought about by the openness in software ecosystems: i) allowing open, transparent communication while keeping intellectual property confidential within the ecosystem, and ii) having the ability to act globally on a long-term strategy while empowering product teams to act locally to answer end-users’ context specific needs in a timely manner.

We also studied the emergent stakeholders’ contributions to online discussions about product features. We found that including emergent contributors early in requirements elicitation was a crucial asset in the ecosystem. On less problematic requirements emergent stakeholders were more likely to comment early in the lifecycle and commented more frequently to clarify requirements. On more problematic requirements, emergent users contributed later. Our analysis suggests that it is important for stakeholders who are external to the team or product to participate in requirements discussions early in the iteration.