Improving IS development teams' performance during requirement analysis in project—The perspectives from shared mental model and emotional intelligence

•Emphasize importance of RA in project.•SMM has impact on RA performance.•EI could be the antecedent factor of SMM.

Numerous studies have investigated factors affecting the project requirement analysis of information system development (ISD) teams from the view of technology, but our research focused on how developers' behaviors affected project team members' requirements analysis work from the emotional intelligence (EI) and shared mental model (SMM) perspectives. Specifically, we separated SMM into task-related SMM and member-related SMM to examine their impacts on ISD teams' performances during requirement analysis phase. Then we chose four scales of EI to research the relationships between them and SMMs. Using the approach of structural equation model, the results indicated that two aspects of SMM both have significant and positive impact on team performance, and EI could be the antecedents of SMM. The results indicate that SMM could enhance the influences of EI on project team performance, so the choice of individual team members and the team building are both significant to ISD teams for better performance in project requirement analysis.