Group facilitation is an important element of group approaches to requirements engineering (RE). The facilitation in traditional face-to-face groups is challenged by the increased globalization of the software industry. Thorough empirical investigation of human facilitation in computer-mediated requirements meetings is needed. This paper presents findings about the facilitation of distributed group settings in a controlled environment. Three professional facilitators mediate 15 three-person groups negotiating software requirements. Facilitation in face-to-face meetings is contrasted with four group settings in which the facilitator is physically separated from the group or co-located with key stakeholders. Rich qualitative and behavioral data enables an understanding of differences and similarities in the facilitation of the distributed groups and of aspects that were detrimental or beneficial to their facilitation. The empirical evidence indicates a reduced richness of social behaviors in computer-mediated group settings which: made the group facilitation problematic; but also enabled certain facilitation support in the medium itself.

The Internet (the net) and World Wide Web (the web) have grown rapidly in the past decade and have come to play a major role in supporting discourse and publication in scholarly communities. The development and application of new services has been very rapid with little central planning, and despite the widespread use, there is little information as yet on the human factors of the use of the net and web. In particular, models of the human factors of individuals interacting with workstations have to be extended to take into account the essential social aspects of computer-mediated discourse and publication. This article provides a framework for analyzing the utility, usability, and likeability of net and web services, and illustrates its application to significant aspects of supporting scholarly communities. The utility of the net and web are measured in terms of the growth of usage, and the different services involved are distinguished in terms of their specific utilities. A layered protocol model is used to model discourse through the net, and is extended to encompass interaction in communities. An operational criterion for distinguishing different communities is defined in terms of the types of awareness that resource providers and users have of one another. A temporal model of discourse processes is developed that enables the spectrum of services ranging from real-time discourse to long-term publication to be analyzed in a unified framework. The dimensions of awareness and time are used to characterize and compare the full range of net services, and model their unification through the next generation of web browsers. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

No abstract available.

The knowledge acquisition bottleneck impeding the development of expert systems is being alleviated by the development of computer-based knowledge acquisition tools. These work directly with experts to elicit knowledge, and structure it appropriately to operate as a decision support tool within an expert system. However, the elicitation of expert knowledge and its effective transfer to a useful knowledge-based system is complex and involves diverse activities. The complete development of a decision support system using knowledge acquisition tools is illustrated. The example is simple enough to be completely analyzed but exhibits enough real-world characteristics to give significant insights into the processes and problems of knowledge engineering.>

No abstract available.