A Field Study of Domain Knowledge Sharing in the Software Development Industry in New Zealand
type: CreativeWork
description: In contemporary software development, an emergent understanding of the problem domain and envisioned goals forms the basis of designing, testing and development activities. Lack of a common understanding of the domain can result in costly rework or client dissatisfaction. Research shows that the development of shared understanding in this context is a complex and error-prone process and there is room for improvement. Is this because practitioners are not following suggested practice from literature? Or are the actual barriers to shared understanding not being addressed by current tools and techniques? Is the development of shared domain understanding even viewed as problematic (or even important) by practitioners? These are some questions that need to be investigated in order to effectively design process improvements and tool support in this area, yet there is little information related to this. This study takes a multi-case study approach, which incorporate semi-structured interviews with representative from ten small-to-medium organisations. This study focuses on the vendor’s perspective and includes a mix of application domains. Result of the interviews is analysed to discover themes and patterns related to an analysis framework constructed from the literature review. The findings indicate that vendors perceive the process of developing shared application-domain understanding with their clients as being both problematic and important to a successful implementation. Twelve barriers have been identified from the analysis. The results also confirm that the process of sharing understanding development is generally perceived as being evolutionary and collaborative. This process is described by most interviewees comprises iterative phases of elicitation, confirmation and refinement of the understanding. A definite preference for face-to-face interaction is evident at regular times throughout development, particularly in early stages, although the importance of ad-hoc …
abstract: In contemporary software development, an emergent understanding of the problem domain and envisioned goals forms the basis of designing, testing and development activities. Lack of a common understanding of the domain can result in costly rework or client dissatisfaction. Research shows that the development of shared understanding in this context is a complex and error-prone process and there is room for improvement. Is this because practitioners are not following suggested practice from literature? Or are the actual barriers to shared understanding not being addressed by current tools and techniques? Is the development of shared domain understanding even viewed as problematic (or even important) by practitioners? These are some questions that need to be investigated in order to effectively design process improvements and tool support in this area, yet there is little information related to this. This study takes a multi-case study approach, which incorporate semi-structured interviews with representative from ten small-to-medium organisations. This study focuses on the vendor’s perspective and includes a mix of application domains. Result of the interviews is analysed to discover themes and patterns related to an analysis framework constructed from the literature review. The findings indicate that vendors perceive the process of developing shared application-domain understanding with their clients as being both problematic and important to a successful implementation. Twelve barriers have been identified from the analysis. The results also confirm that the process of sharing understanding development is generally perceived as being evolutionary and collaborative. This process is described by most interviewees comprises iterative phases of elicitation, confirmation and refinement of the understanding. A definite preference for face-to-face interaction is evident at regular times throughout development, particularly in early stages, although the importance of ad-hoc …
author: Ekadharmawan, Christian Harsana
keywords: Case study, Multiple case study, Field study, Requirement engineering, Domain knowledge, Problem domain, Shared understanding
date published: 2008
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:46:03Z
provider: AUT University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: AUT University