Article

Balancing act: community and local requirements in an open source development process

Author:

Owen G. McGrathAuthors Info & Claims

SIGUCCS '06: Proceedings of the 34th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference: expanding the boundaries

Pages 240 - 244

https://doi.org/10.1145/1181216.1181270

Published: 05 November 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Established best practices in software development tend to assume that a product's intended stakeholders (i.e., users, customers, and clients) are fairly well known and generally accessible. This paper outlines specific issues faced by those who conduct requirements analysis in the context of open source projects in which the user communities are widely distributed. The examples described are drawn from the experience of managing tool development within the Sakai Project [1], a higher education effort to build and share a community source framework for supporting on-line collaboration in academic courses and projects. With a far-flung community of users and developers, this project requires new approaches to eliciting, analyzing, and prioritizing user needs. The issues outlined in this paper are currently being met by a preliminary set of solutions that makes use of web-based project management technologies. These technologies along with some planning and communication strategies help improve the decision-making process involved in deciding whether and how to choose among proposed constraints, use cases, and feature requests.

References

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http://www.sakaiproject.org

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Abel, R., Preliminary Analysis of the Open Source in Higher Education Survey Conducted from April 15, 2005 to May 1, 2005 by the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness. 2005, The Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness: Lake Mary, FL, http://www.a-hec.org/media/files/A-HEC_os_survey_report_050305.pdf

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Wheeler, BC, (2004). The Open Source Parade. Educause Review, 39(6), 68--69.

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Cited By

Tasnim MRayhan MZhang ZPoranen T(2023)A Systematic Literature Review on Requirements Engineering Practices and Challenges in Open-Source Projects2023 49th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)10.1109/SEAA60479.2023.00050(278-285)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SEAA60479.2023.00050
McGrath O(2011)Data Mining User Activity in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)/ Open Learning Management SystemsFree and Open Source Software for E-Learning10.4018/978-1-61520-917-0.ch008(120-131)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61520-917-0.ch008
McGrath O(2010)Data Mining User Activity in Free and Open Source Software FOSS/ Open Learning Management SystemsInternational Journal of Open Source Software and Processes10.4018/jossp.20100101052:1(65-75)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jossp.2010010105
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Balancing act: community and local requirements in an open source development process
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
        Systems development

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGUCCS '06: Proceedings of the 34th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference: expanding the boundaries

November 2006

478 pages

ISBN:1595934383

DOI:10.1145/1181216

General Chair:
Alex Nagorski
University of Alberta
,
Program Chairs:
Gordana Brouilette
University of Alberta
,
Carol Rhodes
Indiana University

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 05 November 2006

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SIGUCCS Fall06

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SIGUCCS Fall06: ACM SIGUCCS Fall Conference:Expanding the Boundaries

November 5 - 8, 2006

Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

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Cited By

Tasnim MRayhan MZhang ZPoranen T(2023)A Systematic Literature Review on Requirements Engineering Practices and Challenges in Open-Source Projects2023 49th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)10.1109/SEAA60479.2023.00050(278-285)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SEAA60479.2023.00050
McGrath O(2011)Data Mining User Activity in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)/ Open Learning Management SystemsFree and Open Source Software for E-Learning10.4018/978-1-61520-917-0.ch008(120-131)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61520-917-0.ch008
McGrath O(2010)Data Mining User Activity in Free and Open Source Software FOSS/ Open Learning Management SystemsInternational Journal of Open Source Software and Processes10.4018/jossp.20100101052:1(65-75)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jossp.2010010105
Wong GChow WWong KChow SLam JCheung HBauer MCarney-Morris MMurphy T(2010)Needs assessment and design of course management system (CMS) using open and community source frameworks in post-secondary institutionsProceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference: navigation and discovery10.1145/1878335.1878371(135-142)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1878335.1878371
Wong GChow WWong KChow SLam JCheung H(2010)An implementation of Sakai open source course management system in post-secondary education2010 International Conference on Educational and Information Technology10.1109/ICEIT.2010.5607619Online publication date: Sep-2010
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICEIT.2010.5607619
Zimmerman AFinholt TGross TInkpen K(2007)Growing an infrastructureProceedings of the 2007 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work10.1145/1316624.1316660(239-248)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1316624.1316660
McGrath OAshworth JLacy LBrown LRhodes C(2007)Seeking activityProceedings of the 35th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference10.1145/1294046.1294103(234-239)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1294046.1294103
Ellis HMorelli RLanerolle THislop G(2007)Holistic Software Engineering Education Based on a Humanitarian Open Source ProjectProceedings of the 20th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training10.1109/CSEET.2007.26(327-335)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CSEET.2007.26

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