Requirements Gathering Process Research Articles

A Geospatial Drug Abuse Risk Assessment and Monitoring Dashboard Tailored for School Students: Development Study With Requirement Analysis and Acceptance Evaluation.

The enormous consequences of drugs include suicides, traffic accidents, and violence, affecting the individual, family, society, and country. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly identify and monitor the drug abuse rate among school-going youth. A geospatial dashboard is vital for the monitoring of drug abuse and related crime incidence in a decision support system. This paper mainly focuses on developing MyAsriGeo, a geospatial drug abuse risk assessment and monitoring dashboard tailored for school students. It introduces innovative functionality, seamlessly orchestrating the assessment of drug abuse usage patterns and risks using multivariate student data. A geospatial drug abuse dashboard for monitoring and analysis was designed and developed in this study based on agile methodology and prototyping. Using focus group and interviews, we first examined and gathered the requirements, feedback, and user approval of the MyAsriGeo dashboard. Experts and stakeholders such as the National Anti-Drugs Agency, police, the Federal Department of Town and Country Planning, school instructors, students, and researchers were among those who responded. A total of 20 specialists were involved in the requirement analysis and acceptance evaluation of the pilot and final version of the dashboard. The evaluation sought to identify various user acceptance aspects, such as ease of use and usefulness, for both the pilot and final versions, and 2 additional factors based on the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire and Task-Technology Fit models were enlisted to assess the interface quality and dashboard sufficiency for the final version. The MyAsriGeo geospatial dashboard was designed to meet the needs of all user types, as identified through a requirement gathering process. It includes several key functions, such as a geospatial map that shows the locations of high-risk areas for drug abuse, data on drug abuse among students, tools for assessing the risk of drug abuse in different areas, demographic information, and a self-problem test. It also includes the Alcohol, Smoking, and Substance Involvement Screening Test and its risk assessment to help users understand and interpret the results of student risk. The initial prototype and final version of the dashboard were evaluated by 20 experts, which revealed a significant improvement in the ease of use (P=.047) and usefulness (P=.02) factors and showed a high acceptance mean scores for ease of use (4.2), usefulness (4.46), interface quality (4.29), and sufficiency (4.13). The MyAsriGeo geospatial dashboard is useful for monitoring and analyzing drug abuse among school-going youth in Malaysia. It was developed based on the needs of various stakeholders and includes a range of functions. The dashboard was evaluated by a group of experts. Overall, the MyAsriGeo geospatial dashboard is a valuable resource for helping stakeholders understand and respond to the issue of drug abuse among youth.

PANDEM-Source, a tool to collect or generate surveillance indicators for pandemic management: a use case with COVID-19 data.

PANDEM-Source (PS) is a tool to collect and integrate openly available public health-related data from heterogeneous data sources to support the surveillance of infectious diseases for pandemic management. The tool may also be used for pandemic preparedness by generating surveillance data for training purposes. It was developed as part of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 PANDEM-2 project during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of close collaboration in a consortium of 19 partners, including six European public health agencies, one hospital, and three first responder organizations. This manuscript describes PS's features and design to disseminate its characteristics and capabilities to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response. A requirement-gathering process with EU pandemic managers in the consortium was performed to identify and prioritize a list of variables and indicators useful for surveillance and pandemic management. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a use case, we developed PS with the purpose of feeding all necessary data to be displayed in the PANDEM-2 dashboard. PS routinely monitors, collects, and standardizes data from open or restricted heterogeneous data sources (users can upload their own data). It supports indicators and health resources related data from traditional data sources reported by national and international agencies, and indicators from non-traditional data sources such as those captured in social and mass media, participatory surveillance, and seroprevalence studies. The tool can also calculate indicators and be used to produce data for training purposes by generating synthetic data from a minimal set of indicators to simulate pandemic scenarios. PS is currently set up for COVID-19 surveillance at the European level but can be adapted to other diseases or threats and regions. With the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to keep building capacity to monitor potential threats and develop tools that can facilitate training in all the necessary aspects to manage future pandemics. PS is open source and its design provides flexibility to collect heterogeneous data from open data sources or to upload end users's own data and customize surveillance indicators. PS is easily adaptable to future threats or different training scenarios. All these features make PS a unique and valuable tool for pandemic management.

Analyzing Variances in User Story Characteristics: A Comparative Study of Stakeholders with Diverse Domain and Technical Knowledge in Software Requirements Elicitation

Background: In Agile software development, an essential initial stage is eliciting software requirements. This process engages stakeholders to achieve comprehensive results. However, a common issue is the variance in domain and technical knowledge among stakeholders, potentially impacting the quality of software requirements elicitation. Objective: Understanding the characteristics of user stories produced by stakeholders becomes crucial, particularly considering the differences in domain and technical knowledge. This study aims to compare the characteristics of user stories generated by stakeholders with varying backgrounds in domain and technical expertise. Methods: The initial step involves categorizing respondents into distinct stakeholder groups. Three stakeholders are involved in this study, constituting a combination of those with high and low technical and domain knowledge. Subsequently, data collection of user stories is conducted across various case studies. Finally, the acquired user stories are analyzed for further insights. Results: The analysis reveals variations in user stories generated by the three stakeholder categories across the three case studies. Stakeholders with domain knowledge tend to focus on 'what' aspects with task elements and 'why' aspects with hard-goal elements. Meanwhile, technical knowledge crafts user stories with capability elements in the 'what' aspect. Utilizing the QUS framework, it is evident that technical knowledge consistently produces a higher number of high-quality user stories across all quality categories, Conclusion: The contribution offered by this study lies in determining the distinct characteristics of user stories produced by different types of stakeholders, focusing on disparities in domain and technical knowledge. The study highlights the comparison of various characteristics of user story elements, such as hard-goals, soft-goals, tasks, or capabilities, and assesses the quality of user stories based on the user story framework. Additionally, it endorse the importance of process innovation in shaping the requirements gathering process and subsequently influencing the quality of user stories. Keywords: User story, Agile Software Development, Requirements Elicitation, Stakeholder, Domain Knowledge, Process Innovation Background: In Agile software development, an essential initial stage is eliciting software requirements. This process engages stakeholders to achieve comprehensive results. However, a common issue is the variance in domain and technical knowledge among stakeholders, potentially impacting the quality of software requirements elicitation. Objective: Understanding the characteristics of user stories produced by stakeholders becomes crucial, particularly considering the differences in domain and technical knowledge. This study aims to compare the characteristics of user stories generated by stakeholders with varying backgrounds in domain and technical expertise. Methods: The initial step involves categorizing respondents into distinct stakeholder groups. Three stakeholders are involved in this study, constituting a combination of those with high and low technical and domain knowledge. Subsequently, data collection of user stories is conducted across various case studies. Finally, the acquired user stories are analyzed for further insights. Results: The analysis reveals variations in user stories generated by the three stakeholder categories across the three case studies. Stakeholders with domain knowledge tend to focus on 'what' aspects with task elements and 'why' aspects with hard-goal elements. Meanwhile, technical knowledge crafts user stories with capability elements in the 'what' aspect. Utilizing the QUS framework, it is evident that technical knowledge consistently produces a higher number of high-quality user stories across all quality categories, Conclusion: The contribution offered by this study lies in determining the distinct characteristics of user stories produced by different types of stakeholders, focusing on disparities in domain and technical knowledge. The study highlights the comparison of various characteristics of user story elements, such as hard-goals, soft-goals, tasks, or capabilities, and assesses the quality of user stories based on the user story framework. Additionally, it endorse the importance of process innovation in shaping the requirements gathering process and subsequently influencing the quality of user stories. Keywords: User story, Agile Software Development, Requirements Elicitation, Stakeholder, Domain Knowledge, Process Innovation

Gamifying requirements: An empirical analysis of game‐based technique for novices

AbstractRequirements elicitation is a process that involves gathering requirements for a given project. Several studies have been published suggesting strategies to improve the requirements gathering process. Using game‐based and crowd‐based approaches, researchers are extracting requirements that are useful for product development today. This study follows the same line of research. This research study aims to improve the understanding of the requirements gathering process by novices or students through different activities: (I) knowledge of requirements gathering method and (II) techniques or activities viable for software requirements (education). Important methods used to address the above objectives are as follows: (I) a comprehensive review of the literature to understand requirements gathering; (II) designing an activity to embed RE challenges and RE sub‐activities; and (III) experiment, survey, and observation to collect data and to assess the proposed methods' effectiveness. The suggested activity for requirement gathering is based on the game tic‐tac‐toe. The participants suggest that the design of the activity is helpful in brainstorming and is also valuable for identifying requirements; moreover, a post questionnaire has been designed to determine the learning of the participants regarding the proposed activity. We can observe simply from the coefficients that both skills and challenges (as perceived by the participants) have positive impacts on engagement, immersion, and perceived learning. The proposed activity helps novices or students gain (basic) knowledge of the requirements gathering process/technique; the outlined activity can be a way of learning requirements and gathering knowledge (basic). From this study, we conclude that the proposed activity has positive results and is helpful for participants to get a better understanding of the requirements engineering method(s).

Green Requirement Engineering: Towards Sustainable Mobile Application Development and Internet of Things

Mobile usage statistics show the one thing that cannot be overlooked, which is the overwhelming usage of smartphones. According to the statistics, there are approximately 6.4 billion users of smartphones. Considering the world population, this rate of smart phone usage is more than 80%. Mobile development is the fastest prominent trend, although web development cannot be denied. However, the fact is that mobile platforms are considered cumbersome and complex when it comes to accomplishing requirement engineering processes, especially when mobile applications are combined with the Internet of Things (IoT). These complexities result in barriers to sustainable mobile development. The difficulty and differences occur due to various limitations, either that of mobile devices or others. Some of those from mobile devices include processor, battery, and touch screens, user experience in terms of touch screens, user context, and interactive behaviors. Other limitations include the difference in the software development lifecycle and the difference in the software development process due to inconsistency in user requirements with the aforementioned limited device capabilities. The target objective of this research is to investigate and identify all possible challenges related to mobile applications and connected mobile devices (IoT) while executing the requirement engineering process. This study can further the existing state of knowledge by contributing to the list of challenges faced in the requirement gathering process of mobile application development. Furthermore, it can also help practitioners, specifically those involved in the requirement gathering process, to carefully consider these challenges before executing the requirement engineering process.

Indexing with artificial intelligence: A case study of Asharq News

Two years ago, Asharq News began using artificial intelligence to index archived content, analysing around 1,600 hours of video assets per month to create multilingual metadata. This case study shares some insight into this project, touching on the requirements gathering process, assessing the output of the service, the challenges faced and the resources required to manage the archival process going forward.

A Comparison of Recent Requirements Gathering and Management Tools in Requirements Engineering for IoT-Enabled Sustainable Cities

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm that facilitates the proliferation of different devices such as sensors and Radio Frequency Identification (RFIDs) for real-time applications such as healthcare and sustainable cities. The growing popularity of IoT opens up new possibilities, and one of the most notable applications is related to the evolving sustainable city paradigm. A sustainable city is normally designed in such a way to consider the environmental impact and a social, economic, and resilient habitat for existing populations without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same, while the process of managing project requirements is known as requirements management. To design a high-quality project, effective requirements management is imperative. A number of techniques are already available to perform the requirement gathering process, and software developers apply them to collect the requirements. Nevertheless, they are facing many issues in gathering requirements due to a lack of literature on the selection of appropriate methods, which affects the quality of the software. The software design quality can be improved by using requirements capture and management techniques. Some tools are used to comprehend the system accurately. In this paper, a qualitative comparison of requirements-gathering tools using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and requirements-management tools is presented for sustainable cities. With all the tools and techniques available for capturing and managing requirements, it has been proven that software developers have a wide range of alternatives for selecting the best tool that fits their needs, such as chosen by the AI agent. This effort will aid in the development of requirements for IoT-enabled sustainable cities.

Users' Willingness to Provide Information Requirements for Systems Development

Eliciting information requirements from users is critical to timely and successful development of information systems. Despite its importance, however, users may not always be willing to cooperate during the requirements gathering process because sharing the required information may be perceived by them as detrimental to their self-interests. In the present research we investigate users' willingness to provide requirements using the Theory of Planned Behavior, ethics, and anticipated regret. We develop and test a model that draws from these three theories. Data were collected from a sample of 130 respondents and analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Results support our hypotheses that behavioral considerations, ethical considerations, and anticipated regret influence users' willingness to provide information requirements. We discuss theoretical and practical contributions of our findings and implications for future research.

Development and usability testing of mobile application on diet and oral health.

In several nations, caries in pre-school children remain a significant oral health issue. In an outbreak period such as the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), remote contact and education aimed at the prevention of oral diseases and the preservation of children’s oral health are more relevant than ever. Currently, the amount of published applications is far higher than the published scientific studies while the problems of usability remains vulnerable. The goal of this paper was to comprehensively document the phase of development and usability testing of a mobile application for diet and oral health, namely Gigiku Sihat, which was primarily intended to be used by parents and guardians of pre-school children. The mobile application was developed using the System Development Life Cycle principle. Apart from searching for the available oral health application on Android platform, the initial requirement gathering process consisted of situational analysis, concept generation, content development, and features and functional requirement determination. The mobile application design and implementation evolved at each phase before being finalised. Gigiku Sihat was successfully developed in the Bahasa Malaysia. Finalised Gigiku Sihat was installed on mobile devices to determine the usability using translated and validated System Usability Scale questionnaire namely Skala Kebolehgunaan Aplikasi Mudah Alih (SKAMA). The mean score usability with score of 68 and above was deemed to have good usability. This study found that Gigiku Sihat mean (SD) usability score was 77.0 (14.18). The results were promising as they showed that Gigiku Sihat had a good usability. Thus, the development of this mobile application focusing on diet and oral health served as a new source of oral health education and provided a necessary foundation in developing future improved mobile application development for parents in the prevention of early childhood caries.

Requirement introspection and involvement of stakeholder

In this paper, we clarify how to fulfil the need of client. When a client has giant idea and he don’t know how to describe it to others than the requirement engineers approach this technique. The involvement of stakeholder to inspect the need of client and give a hint near to his requirement. How the client introduces his idea to company and how the requirement engineer will work on it will be explain in this paper. Client attitude may also a reflection of his requirement. Introspection is basically the self-perception. An organization is responsible for taking care of stakeholder. Once they show their involvement in any organization, it will be grateful for both parties i.e. their business will grow on the power of two. Once the communication is started requirement engineer will use some techniques for gathering requirement. As the stakeholders duties is to operate the organization and they are all connected virtually to each other. So during using techniques, introspection is also very important and without it requirement gathering process won’t be complete. Some organization use groupware tools for gathering requirement. Elicitation technique is also use in this process. Elicitation technique is also known as appropriate and qualitative technique. No attribute is considered in introspection.

Developing a Mobile Application Using Open Source Parking Management System on Etherium Smart Contracts

In this paper, we envision to illustrate the process to be used in developing a mobile application on the smart contract. We start by looking at what other researchers have accomplished and how we can improve on what already exists. The paper highlights the requirement gathering process, the methodology for data collection to streamline and validate the requirement, the architecture and implementation phase by analyzing the technological stack to achieve the business goal.

Knowledge management system design method with joint application design (JAD) adoption

PurposeThis study proposes to adopt joint application design (JAD) in the requirement gathering process on developing a knowledge management system (KMS) using Fernandez methodology. It is proposed that Fernandez methodology produces only a list of KMS features and the requirement of the feature is still unclear. This study aims to produce KMS that meets the needs and expectations of users based on features of Fernandez's methodology.Design/methodology/approachThis study was conducted using a combination methodology that combines Fernandez methodology to identify the feature needs of the organization and JAD to identify user requirements of KMS. The system prototype is evaluated by measuring user satisfaction using the Post Study System Usability Questionnaire.FindingsThe results of this study indicate that with the adoption of JAD it is possible to get the requirement in accordance with the expectations of the user. In addition, this study also shows that the level of user satisfaction with the prototype developed with the requirement is high at 84% of the maximum score.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was used only in the education context, especially teaching assistant problems at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia. For this reason, further research is needed for different contexts so that the implementation of this combination of methods can be generalized more broadly.Practical implicationsThis paper provides practical implications for the development of KMS by identifying user requirements using JAD.Originality/valueThis paper provides a combination method to generate KMS that meets user requirements.

An Intelligent Recommender System Based on Association Rule Analysis for Requirement Engineering

Requirement gathering is a vital step in software engineering. Even though many recent researches concentrated on the improvement of the requirement gathering process, many of their works lack completeness especially when the number of users is large. Data Mining techniques have been recently employed in various domains with promising results. In this work, we propose an intelligent recommender system for requirement engineering based on association rule analysis, which is a main category in Data Mining. Such recommender would contribute in enhancing the accuracy of the gathered requirements and provide more comprehensive results. Conducted experiments in this work prove that FP Growth outperformed Apriori in terms of execution and space consumption, while both methods were efficient in term of accuracy.

Improving software requirements reasoning by novices: a story‐based approach

Requirements elicitation is one of the essential steps towards software design and construction. Business analysts and stakeholders often face challenges in gathering or conveying key software requirements. There are many methods and tools designed by researchers and practitioners but with the persistent development of new technologies, there is a need to make requirements gathering and design-rationale process more efficient and adaptable. Storytelling is an emerging concept and researchers are witnessing its effectiveness in education, community building, information system, and requirement elicitation. Objectives of this study are to devise a method for requirements elicitation and improving design-rationales using story-based techniques and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed activity. To answer the research objectives, the authors have conducted open-ended interviews to get feedback on the proposed method; the authors have case requirement from a running project to map how this method can be useful; and performed empirical evaluation of the proposed card-based activity. The estimated regression model, in our study, has shown that participants' perception about the simplicity/easiness and the joy of playing the game has an eventual positive effect on requirements elicitation through enhancing user's desire to play the game, which in turn increases the collaborative learning outcomes of the game.

Development and Implementation of Electronic Disease Early Warning Systems for Optimal Disease Surveillance and Response during Humanitarian Crisis and Ebola Outbreak in Yemen, Somalia, Liberia and Pakistan.

To share lessons learned with experience in concept development of electronic disease early warning system (eDEWS) as a standardized informatic tool for optimal disease surveillance for early warning and response Network (EWARN) during humanitarian crisis. We did literature search, review and analysis to document system attributes of existing electronic tools being used for disease surveillance, early warning and health management information system (HMIS). We generated baseline information and conducted multiple planning sessions with stakeholders for EWARN system requirement elicitation and validation to inform concept development of standardized electronic tool. We identified 98 electronic health projects, classified 22 projects under 'Disease and epidemic outbreak surveillance' theme, whereas only four electronic tools met our selection criteria and were reported to be implemented in humanitarian settings complimentary to EWARN. Baseline information was obtained to guide work on requirement gathering and analysis process, and development of concept for a standardized electronic tool for EWARN. The eDEWS was enhanced with an objective to develop standardize electronic tools and data collection procedures to monitor diseases and health events for alert detection in global humanitarian settings. The enhanced system could be harnessed as a powerful tool by outbreak response teams in getting vital epidemiological information for appropriate and timely response during emergencies. eDEWS experiences in Yemen, Somalia, Liberia and Pakistan offers an opportunity to learn and apply lessons to improve future health informatics initiatives or adapt eDEWS as a feasible standardized approach to enhance EWARN implementation during humanitarian crisis, and potential integration into routine surveillance systems.

Requirement Gathering Problems: Environmental Issues in Robot Development

This paper deals with the importance of environment consideration in developed countries while collecting the requirement from customer to make robot that would address the question “Why robots should be made more precisely according to the environment needs? “In developed countries, robots are used in manufacturing work as well as in performing the hazardous tasks such as bomb-disposal. So, there is a need to pay attention towards making the robots that can fit perfectly to some extent in environment to be utilized more efficiently. A lot of money, effort and time is spent on making the robots .But what if such a worth costing robot fails to fit in the operational environment? The best way to solve this problem is proposed in this paper which is to make the environment as a part of Requirement gathering process carrying high importance in robot making process to make the robots more Operational and suitable for the working environment .Like the other main attributes in requirement gathering process such as user requirements, system requirements and external requirements, there should be an attribute “Environmental requirements” which will automatically put emphasis on the considering also the environment as a main subject to pay heed.

Requirements gathering: the journey

Requirements gathering in Information Systems is a critical part of any project, as any issues with the elicited requirements have an impact on the project as a whole and in some cases can lead to project failure. To address the issues with gathering effective requirements this paper proposes viewing the requirements gathering process as a human centred journey. The journey being critical to the requirements gathering experience of participants. This allows for a better understanding of the requirements gathering process and its effectiveness. This study helps with the decision-making process by assisting with engineering an effective requirements gathering approach which ultimately follows a design science approach and its objective is to build a prototype of a ‘requirements gathering journey’ canvas.

Identification of EMR Hardware and Space Design Requirements using Human Factors Analyses

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are being implemented globally in the hope of improving patient care, provider coordination, documentation accuracy, and information availability. Numerous factors impact successful EMR implementation including usability, accessibility and unique characteristics of the sociotechnical system within which it will be used. This paper describes the application of human factors methods to support effective EMR implementation at one pediatric hospital. The focus is on the problem of hardware selection and placement – a topic that has not received much attention in the literature to date. The requirements gathering process for two outpatient clinics included a task and gap analysis of current clinic workflows that led to the identification of specific hardware and design recommendations supporting future EMR workflows. Lessons learned post-implementation and requirements associated with hospital wide practices were extrapolated to generate guiding principles that apply to EMR implementation in other outpatient clinics.

Simulation Based Decision Support Systems: An Industrial End-user Based Requirement Gathering Process

Modern manufacturing systems are growing in scale and complexity and increasingly require integrated predictive modelling and optimization methodologies to support routine decision making processes. The engineering of a free open source simulation modelling platform is the basis of the DREAM project, a Framework Programme 7 initiative co-funded by the European Commission. This paper reports on the capture of requirements for DREAM from four industrial end-users. These industrial end-users’ requirements and accompanying pilot cases drive the research, technology and development work in the project. The users vary in size from micro-SME to multi-national and global organizations and by industry; from semi-conductor manufacturing, medical device design and manufacture to industrial machine manufacture and pre- process/prototype manufacturers. To capture requirements from the organizations a methodology was developed which is reported on in the paper. Its outcomes provide the basis for the subsequent open-source software development. In particular, the work assessed the various partner needs in the pre-coding, simulation application development, simulation application use and data-analytics areas which cover the end-to-end usage of a simulation based decision support system

Requirements for a registry of electronic licences

PurposeThis paper sets out to present a brief history of electronic licensing initiatives before considering current practices for managing licences to electronic resources. The intention is to obtain a detailed understanding of the requirements needed for a registry of electronic licences that will enable usage terms and conditions to be presented to end‐users at point of use.Design/methodology/approachTwo extensive focus groups were held, each comprising representatives from the main stakeholder groups. These structured events considered existing and ongoing issues and approaches towards licence management and investigated a range of “use‐cases” where potential usages for a licence registry were outlined and discussed.FindingsThe results form part of a requirements gathering and analysis process which will inform the development of a registry of electronic licences. The work forms part of the JISC‐funded Registry of Electronic Licences (RELI) project.. The paper finds that there are many complexities when dealing with electronic licences such as licence specificity, licence interpretation, definitions of authorised users and dissemination of usage terms and conditions.Practical implicationsThese issues and others are considered and the impact on a subsequent registry of electronic licences is discussed. It is clear from the findings that there is a real and immediate need for a licence registry.Originality/valueThe paper provides a rich picture of the concerns and practices adopted both when managing licences and when ensuring conformance with licences to electronic resources. The findings have enabled the scope of a licence registry to be determined. The registry is currently under development.