FeatureIT : a platform for collaborative software development

Abstract

The development of enterprise software is a complex activity that requires a diverse set of stakeholders to communicate and coordinate in order to achieve a successful outcome. In this dissertation I introduce a high-level physical architecture for a platform titled FeatureIT that has the goal of supporting the collaboration between stakeholders throughout the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). FeatureIT is the result of unifying the theoretical foundations of the multi-disciplinary field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) with the paradigm and associated technologies of Web 2.0. The architecture was borne out a study of literature in the fields of CSCW, Web 2.0 and software engineering, which facilitated the identification of functional and non-functional requirements necessary for the platform. The design science research methodology was employed to construct this architecture iteratively to satisfy the requirements while validating its efficacy against a comprehensive set of scenarios that typically occur in the SDLC.