Technology Enabling Requirements Engineer’s Collaboration : The Case of Jira

Requirements Engineering (RE) plays a vital role in Information Systems (IS) development. The collaboration of requirements engineers is at the core of RE activities and is typically supported by technology tools, with Jira being an example of such a tool. Since these technology tools, like Jira, are focused on the execution of traditional duties, the collaboration functionalities of these technology tools are unseen. Moreover, little research has been carried out to explore how requirements engineers’ collaboration is supported and the challenges are created by the technology tools. Interpretive qualitative research was conducted to understand the nature of requirements engineers’ collaboration in three IS development organisations in Sweden to better support it with technology tools. The empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews and observations and was analysed thematically to generate seven themes. The findings revealed that the technology tools facilitate requirements engineers’ cooperation, communication among multiple collaborating parties in one platform, coordination of work activities and information sharing among other collaborating parties. Additionally, it discovered that the inability to support real-time communication, high configurability, limited sharing possibilities, compatibility, technicality and complexity challenge and interrupt the requirement engineers’ collaboration. Moreover, the theoretical frame findings are discussed with the help of the theoretical framework, including the activity theory. Requirements engineers’ collaboration is presented as a purposeful interaction among them and other people with the support of technology tools to complete the process of RE in information systems development. Their interactions and the importance of the technology tools are underlined. Hence, the outcome of the master’s thesis research shows that the collaborative technology tools enable the requirement engineers’ collaboration through supporting and facilitating their effective communication, cooperation, coordination, information sharing, and through facilitating their awareness, allowing them in this way to drive the information systems projects and/or products development into successful completion. The extended collaboration model presented in this research in combination with activity theory is used to understand the transformation of the enabling collaboration of requirements engineers