Enhancing E-Collaboration Effectiveness through the Use of Wikis: A Theoretical Examination in the Context of Requirements Elicitation

This article focuses on communication challenges in requirements elicitation (RE) for systems development, and how wikis can enhance the communication process and outcomes in the context of this collaborative task. We focus upon only one specific collaborative task in this article-Requirements Elicitation-and upon one particular e-collaboration aspect of that task-communication among various stakeholders-to narrow the domain of inquiry and bring sufficient depth to our theoretical analysis. The specific variables we focus upon in this article are communications quality and requirements quality. We discuss specific wiki features and provide a brief comparison of wikis with other communication technologies. We then provide a detailed theoretical analysis of how specific wiki features enhance media richness, contextual richness, and organizational memory, and through them, communication quality as well as requirements quality in terms of clarity, completeness, and consistency of requirements specifications. We also discuss some implications and future research directions. [Article copies are available for purchase from InfoScion-Demand.com]