(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1995)
Catledge, Lara D.; Potts, Colin
Conceptual design involves requirements analysis, functional
specification, and architectural design. It remains informal and poorly
understood. We studied the conceptual design activities of a
representative industrial software project, Centauri, for three months
with follow-up observations and discussions over the following six
months. Our goal was to understand how patterns of collaboration and
communication in project teams affect the convergence of the project on a
common vision and a documented specification. In this paper, we present
our research methodology, our findings, and their implications for
process and tool support. The following observations stand out. First,
convergence on a common system vision was painfully slow. The major
impediment to faster progress was the difficulty that the project team
had in making critical allocation and interface design decisions. Second,
Centauri project members repeatedly raised certain issues and failed to
reach closure on key problems. Finally, we observed a persistent tension
between the desire on behalf of nearly all project members to follow a
proceduralized development process and the urgency of delivering a
working product.