Collaborative Requirements Engineering: Bridging the Gulfs Between Worlds - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 349

communications are structured within teams and to recommend how CSCW (com-
puter supported collaborative work) technologies might be adapted to improve
teamworking. Although RE is recognised to be a multidisciplinary process which
draws upon psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics, the role of linguis-
tics has been limited to parsing and understanding requirements in natural language
statements [ 23, 24] and formalising requirements statements [ 4] . More socially ori-
ented discourse theories of language have received less attention. In this chapter a
discourse theory of language, common ground [ 5] , is used to motivate a method
engineering design for collaborative RE as well as to evaluate the contributions that
different representations might make to enhancing mutual understanding with RE
teams.

2 Common Ground

The common ground theory or Clark's linguistic theory of discourse [ 5] describes
the process by which mutual understanding is achieved though the process structure
of human-human discourse. Briefly, Clark's theory of discourse explains how mean-
ing is constructed by conversation and action which progresses towards a mutually
agreed goal, the action ladder and project in Clark's terms. The main tenets of the
theory that concern RE are summarised in Fig. 1.

prior
knowledge

prior
knowledge

Conversations
have tracks

and layers
of meaning

side topic

surface intent

CG is generated
from

main topic

Conversation
exchanges

metaphors,
irony, fiction,
deep meaning

meta-dialogue
manages
conversation

B B B

A A A

Arena: place
and time

build mutual
understanding
-common ground

Setting: culture
and norms

progress towards
an agreed goal

Fig. 1 Summary of common ground concepts