Comparing two Communication Media in Use Case Modeling: Results from a Controlled Experiment

A critical claim in software requirements regards the assertion that the team performances improve when media with higher richness levels are used. To investigate this claim, we have conducted a controlled experiment to compare traditional face-to-face communication, the richest medium, and a leaner medium, namely an advanced chat implementing a distributed version of Think-Pair-Square (i.e., a well known method for collaborative problem solving). The comparison has been performed considering the time needed to model functional requirements through a use case modeling technique. Since the only assessment of time could be meaningless, we have also analyzed the media effect on the quality of the produced use cases. The results indicate a significant difference in terms of time to model software requirements in favor of face-to-face communication with no significant impact on the quality.