"How do I know what I have to do?": the role of the inquiry culture in requirements communication for distributed software development projects

Abstract

As software specifications for complex systems are practically never 100% complete and consistent, the recipient of the specification needs domain knowledge in order to decide which parts of the system are specified clearly and which parts are specified ambiguously and thus need inquiry to achieve a more detailed specification. In this paper we classify 16 different situations (states) of requirements communication and analyze, based on a state diagram, how a mature inquiry culture can help to initiate transitions from undesirable states into more desirable states. In a case study the inquiry practices of a very large software development organization are shown. Knowledge networks within the organization play an important role in building up a mature inquiry culture.