The success of large software engineering projects depends critically on the specification, which must represent the requirements of a large number of people with widely differing perspectives. Conventional approaches to software engineering do not address the process of identifying and integrating these perspectives, but instead concentrate on the maintenance of a single consistent description. This results in a specification which represents only one point of view, often the analyst's, excluding suggestions which do not fit with this view. The processes which led to the adoption of this point of view will go unrecorded, making any rationale attached to such a specification incomplete. Other participants will not be able to validate it properly, as it does not relate to their requirements. This thesis integrates ideas drawn from the study of knowledge acquisition, computer-supported co-operative work and negotiation into a model of the specification activity which allows the capture ...

Conflict is an inevitable part of both requirements elicitation and system design. As McDermid points out elsewhere in this volume, requirements are negotiated, not captured. During this process, the participants will disagree over how to interpret features of the application domain, what the requirements for a new system are, and how to meet those requirements. Conventional

A mundane but theoretically interesting and practically relevant situation presents itself on social networking sites: the co-presence of multiple groups important to an individual. This primarily qualitative study concentrates on the point of view of individual SNS users and their perspectives on multiple group affiliations. After charting the perceived multiplicity of groups on the social networking site Facebook, we investigated the relevance of multiple groups to the users and the effect of group co-presence on psychological identification processes. Users deal with group co-presence by managing the situation to prevent anticipated conflictive and identity-threatening situations. Their behavioral strategies consist of dividing the platform into separate spaces, using suitable channels of communication, and performing selfcensorship. Mental strategies include both the creation of more inclusive in-group identities and the reciprocity of trusting other users and being responsible. In addition to giving further evidence of the existence of group co-presence on SNSs, the study sheds light on the management of the phenomenon. Management of group co-presence should be supported, since otherwise users may feel the urge to resort to defensive strategies of social identity protection such as ceasing to use SNSs altogether or, less dramatically, limit their use according to “the least common denominator”. Hence, the phenomenon merits the attention of researchers, developers, and designers alike.

The Electronic Dialogue Project, designed to test the expectation that group deliberation produces deeper public engagement with political issues, assembled representative groups of citizens to participate in online political deliberations during the 2000 presidential campaign. Sixty groups, drawn from a random sample of Americans, engaged in a series of monthly, real-time electronic discussions about issues facing the country and the unfolding presidential campaign. Preliminary results suggest that online discussions fostered increased political engagement and general community participation. Controlling for initial trust and propensity to attend, the number of discussion events attended is a significant predictor of post-project social trust. The results support the theoretical connection of social capital to active political participation.

Groupware, and particularly Group Support System (GSS) tools, support organisational co-ordination and interaction between various organisational structures working within a decentralised market that evolves in different times and places. In 1998, 1999 and 2000 an educational project (HKNet) between the City University of Hong Kong (China) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) has shown that remote collaboration can lead to successful problem solving in multicultural groups. This study focused on 178 participants, all of whom were involved in academic courses on software engineering, informatics and management using e-mail, videoconferencing, Internet phone connections and GroupSystems ™ for both synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The task was to participate in a joint project on a chosen IT-related subject resulting in a joint report. The HKNet project created a win-win situation for both universities. Throughout the three-year project, GroupSystems ™ supported efficient group problem solving, development of new-shared meaning and cultural attitude changes. The groups wrote creative reports that reflected their having worked successfully together. This paper presents selected results in an abbreviated form and the lessons learned from the last three years of the HKNet experience. Special emphasis is given to social and cultural phenomena. Limitations of our study will be discussed before to conclude with future research plans. 1.

this document for granted, concentrating instead on the downstream areas of software development. In this chapter, we argue that the problems of requirements engineering deserve greater study. To understand why this is so, we consider the role of the specification in the software engineering process, and describe issues which must be addressed during specification construction. The difficulties of requirements engineering come from many directions, including the sheer quantity of knowledge involved, the inherent uncertainty, and the need for negotiation where there are conflicting requirements. We conclude that a prescriptive framework to support negotiation of requirements is highly desirable, and describe a number of objectives for such a framework.

A dynamic model of group performance is suggested that combines the group learning approach and the combination of contributions approach. Three hypotheses are tested in two experiments, comparing individual training conditions with mixed group and individual training conditions on subsequent nominal and collective group performance of rule induction tasks under identical time constraints. As predicted, collective group performance improves as a function of group experience, nominal group performance improves as a function of improved individual resources for performing the task individually, and group experience reduces process losses by improving individuals’ ability to collaborate efficiently. Several experiments from the literature that address issues of group learning are analyzed in the light of the propositions made in the dynamic model. Overall, theoretical and experimental approaches to investigating group learning phenomena are discussed.

This paper surveys a number of fields

physical activity, social connectedness, group dynamics The advancement of current technology allows developing lightweight unobtrusive devices, which detect human physical activity. However, there has always been a major issue, hindering the regular usage of these gadgets-many people find it difficult to fit them in their daily routine. In this thesis, we develop an application, which allows us to measure the influence of online social networks on people involved in physical activity programs. On the grounds of our literature research, we identify different motivational triggers that can be employed for the design of a social network application in the context of physical activity programs. Based on these findings, we design and implement the ActiveTeam application, using Facebook as underlying social network service. In the course of the document we propose several methods to evaluate the behaviour of ActiveTeam users. These methods are intended to help us analyze and improve the application

Procedural justice and status in organizations, 7/9/2002, page 1