Sociala gränsöverskridare vid agil kravinsamling : En studie om hur sociala grupper påverkar ett IT-företags kravinsamlingsprocess

Sammanfattning: Agile development methods have been debated a lot recently and are considered to be a hot topic in the research world. They were created as a counterpart to the more traditional methods that are considered too inert and inflexible for dynamic markets. Agile methods are characterized by iterative, flexible and customer proximity approaches, where focus lies within individuals, interactions and communication. Requirement elicitation, the initial stage of a project, is considered to be the most communication intense part of requirement engineering. During requirement elicitation, there are a lot of stakeholders to consider and effects of the human factor, like people's different values, competences and opinions, are inevitable. The aim of this study was to investigate how social factors affects a smaller IT-company and its requirement elicitation process. At the time of this study, the company were rather new to the agile way of working and was experiencing some difficulties with their requirement elicitation. By working with methods such as observations and interviews, factors affecting their elicitation process was mapped out, where social factors were identified as the most crucial ones. By using theories such as Communities of Practice, it was clear that different social groups at the company affected the communication and knowledge sharing during requirement elicitation. To have a more successful requirement process, it was necessary for people to understand each other and being able to share knowledge between CoP:s. The study showed that boundary processes and bridges between different CoP:s were a crucial part for making this happen.