Exploring the cultural and social impacts on the requirements engineering processes ‐ highlighting some problems challenging virtual team relationships with clients

Requirements engineering is a crucial phase in software development. Software development in a virtual domain adds another dimension to the process of requirements engineering. There has been growing interest in virtual teams, and more specifically in virtual software development. While structured software development methods are the obvious first choice for project managers to ensure a virtual software development team remains on track, the social and cultural aspects of requirements engineering cannot be ignored. These social aspects are especially important across different cultures, and have been shown to affect the success of an information system. The discussion in this paper is centred around the requirements engineering processes of a virtual team in a Thai Software House. This paper explains the issues and challenges of requirements engineering in a virtual domain from a social and cultural perspective. Project managers need to encourage a balance between structured methods and social aspects in requirements engineering for virtual team members. Cultural and social aspects influence the relationship between the virtual team and the client.