Charateristics and Impact of Interpersonal Conflicts on Requirements Risks
Avinder Walia · Scholarship@Western (Western University) · 2012
Interpersonal conflicts in software projects have an impact on project’s success, product’s quality, team’s performance, etc. However, in Requirements Engineering (RE), there is dearth of research on this topic; previous research has focused largely on conflicts among requirements. We conducted a case study of an industrial project to determine the characteristics (e.g., type, severity, conflict management styles, etc.) and impact of interpersonal conflicts rooted in RE (RE-Conflicts), on project risks associated with requirements (e..g., inadequately identified requirements, incorrect requirements, etc). The findings show that the conflicts over administrative procedures (47%) had the highest frequency count. The highest number of RE-Conflict incidences took place in the elicitation activity (46%). A significant impact of RE-Conflicts on requirements risks was also observed (e.g., ‘continually changing requirements’ was affected by 80% RE-Conflicts). This knowledge can aid in initiating risk management in RE and in developing tools, mitigation strategies and mid-range theories on RE-Conflicts.