Requirements Elicitation Phase Research Articles

Use of Journey Maps and Personas in Software Requirements Elicitation

Requirements elicitation is a fundamental step in a software development process since it is at this stage that the software begins to be designed. In some situations, the problems related to the failure of the software development project are due to an incomplete requirements elicitation, resulting in solutions that do not understand all the necessary functionalities or do not incorporate innovation. Despite the various techniques offered by Requirements Engineering, situations such as the growing application market and the need for innovation further increase the importance of understanding the user’s different needs. In this paper, we investigated how the journey map and personas techniques are being used in requirements elicitation in both the literature and the industry, along with the advantages, disadvantages and challenges of using these techniques. We conducted systematic literature review to identify the personas and journey map techniques used in requirements elicitation in the literature and industry. In addition, we conducted a survey with 52 practitioners (software developers, users and managers) to investigate their perceptions of the use of journey maps and personas techniques in the requirements elicitation phase. Twenty-four primary studies were identified that address journey map and personas techniques in software requirements elicitation. In addition, most respondents stated that using these techniques facilitates understanding the requirements, providing better integration, collaboration and leveling of knowledge among the members of the software development teams. Our findings allow us to conclude that most of the software developers, users and managers that participated in the survey consider that the journey map and personas techniques are effective in helping understand the software requirements to be developed by the development teams.

The acceptability, adoption, and feasibility of a music application developed using participatory design for home-dwelling persons with dementia and their caregivers. The "Alight" app in the LIVE@Home.Path trial.

Music interventions for persons with dementia can improve health and interaction with caregivers, yet the reach is often restricted to institutions. We describe the participatory design process of a prototype music application for patients affiliated with a gerontopsychiatric hospital and evaluate the acceptability, adoption, and feasibility of use for dyads of home-dwelling persons with dementia and their informal caregivers. The application "Alight" was developed following an iterative, expert-driven participatory design approach, which includes a requirement elicitation phase and two rounds of prototyping and testing in real-world settings. End users and stakeholders were involved in all steps, that is, workshops, interviews, field observation, ethnographic inquiries, and beta testing sessions with music therapists, patients, and caregivers in collaboration with a commercial music and technology company. The last prototyping and testing took place in the LIVE@Home.Path trial, a stepped-wedge multicomponent randomized controlled trial to improve resource utilization and caregiver burden in municipal dementia care during 2019-2021. Mean age of the person with dementia in the LIVE@Home.Path trial was 82 years, 62% were female, and the majority had Alzheimer's dementia (44%) of mild severity (71%). Sixty-three dyads were offered Alight in the multicomponent intervention, of which 13% (n = 8) accepted use. The dyads accepting Alight did not differ in demographic and clinical characteristics compared to those not interested. The feasibility was high among those accepting Alight, 75% (n = 6) reported a positive impact on mood, 50% (n = 4) experienced a positive impact on activity, and 50% (n = 4) gooduser-friendliness. The adoption was high with daily use or use several times a week reported by 63% (n = 5). Obstacles emerged when updating the application in homes without wireless Wi-Fi, and some participants were unfamiliar with using touchscreens. The feasibility and adoption of the application were high and accepting dyads did not differ on demographic and clinical variables from those not reached. This suggests a high potential for utilization in dementia care. This study contributes methodologically to the field of participatory design and mHealth interventions by demonstrating a specific design approach that throughout the process successfully involved researchers, industry partners, health care practitioners, and end users. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04043364.

Requirements Engineering: Conflict Detection Automation Using Machine Learning

The research community has well recognized the importance of requirement elicitation. Recent research has shown the continuous decreasing success rate of IS projects in the last five years due to the complexity of the requirement conflict refinement process. Requirement conflict is at the heart of requirement elicitation. It is also considered the prime reason for deciding the success or failure of the intended Information System (IS) project. This paper introduces the requirements conflict detection automation model based on the Mean shift clustering unsupervised machine learning model. It utilizes the advantages of Artificial Intelligence in detecting and classifying the requirement conflicts occurring in the requirement elicitation phase. An experiment of the proposed model was conducted, composed of 207 observations and 11 parameters. The results show that the correct detection accuracy for the (Conflicted Requirements, Partial Conflicted Requirements & Conflict Free Requirements). The proposed model findings provide a promising and effective detection process regarding requirements classification. The model validation process provides a performance comparison between the model output vs. the output produced by the requirement conflict verification phase, detailing the Standard Error (SE) measure of accuracy values and the detected clusters. The implications of this study could be used to promote the automatization of the requirement elicitation process. Thus, increasing the potentiality of enhancing the produced systems designs.

Selection of Requirement Elicitation Techniques: A Neural Network based Approach

Requirement Elicitation is key activity of requirement engineering and has a strong impact on design and other phases of software development life cycle. Poor requirement engineering practices lead to project failure. A sound requirement elicitation process is the foundation for the overall quality of software product. Due to criticality and high impact of this phase on overall success and failure of projects, it is very necessary to perform the requirements elicitation activities in a perfect and specific manner. The most difficult and demanding jobs during Requirement Elicitation phase is to select appropriate and specific technique from a wide array of techniques and tools. In this paper, a new approach is proposed using an artificial neural network for selection of requirement elicitation technique from a wide variety of tools and techniques that are available. The training of Neural Network is done by back propagation algorithm. The trained and resultant network can be used as a base for selection of requirement elicitation techniques.

An Agent-based Model for Flexible Customization in Product-Service Systems

Product-Service System (PSS) models offer an integrated service solution to create value for businesses. In the high-value manufacturing sector, value creation for maintaining market competitiveness and improving customer satisfaction is a challenging task. Designing an effective PSS solution depends on integrated service, and product requirements and constraints. Thereby, PSS contract decisions can be significantly influenced by customers’ requirements, and also product and service features. However, existing literature primarily focuses on the impact of service requirements on the PSS contract decisions. Moreover, the existing insights for PSS customization mainly consider hysteretic customer requirements rather than forecasting the requirements under product and service uncertainties. In this paper, an agent-based cost-benefit analysis simulation model is implemented for the PSS contract decisions context. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is conducted on service costs. Additionally, the effect of product remaining life on service contract decisions is analyzed. The simulation model considers stochastic uncertainty to study PSS contracts customization. The presented model supports PSS customization process by providing a quantitative tool that measures contracts’ profitability as early as the requirement elicitation phase. Furthermore, the bottom-up nature of the model, and the integration of probabilistic uncertainties enhance the flexibility of PSS customization. A case study of PSS contract decision in the machine tool industry is considered for assessing the validity of the presented model. Studies on different forms of service uncertainty highlight that the product failure rate has the most influence on the profitability of a service contract. Moreover, the impact of product age on profitability in an availability-based contract is more significant compared to a spare-parts contract.

Eliciting Organizational Requirements Using Stakeholder Prioritization

Different stakeholders come together to find the requirements of a software in an organization. While there are many contradicting requirements which can be provided by different stakeholders, they need to be prioritized properly in order to avoid the confusion in the development or requirements elicitation phase.

Design and control systemic methodology ver.03: systemic modelling with cybernetic aspects

The socio-technical systems are now inherent in both the mainstream and the development cycle of any modern business and organisation. The modelling of the underlying systems is essential for the correct decision making by managers. A key role for the stakeholders' communication and the proper design of the model play the design modelling methodologies and especially the systemic ones. The purpose of the present study is to formulate and present a methodology that is proper for systems design incorporating systemic and cybernetic aspects. The proposed methodology is based on a graphical modelling notation and applies to sociotechnical systems, especially to the design and/or requirements elicitation phase of information systems. Our approach is based on the design and control systemic methodology (DCSYM) (Assimakopoulos and Theocharopoulos, 2009), which is enriched with new features in order to support the proposed functionalities. The proposed modelling approach extends the design and control systemic methodology (DCSYM) and opens new horizons in the cybernetics sector.

Requirements Elicitation Technique Selection: A Five Factors Approach

Requirements Engineering phase is well recognized as a root of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) by research community. Requirements are elucidated through requirements elicitation methods conceded by requirement analyst. Requirements elicitation phase is planned and strategized to get complete acquaintance about user’s requirements and expectations. Current software industries having massive necessity to help requirements analyst in requirements elicitation process to carry out precise manner. Correct and refined requirements lead to successful software projects. Vague and incorrect requirements possibly will result in the defective software project. For successful software development, it is vital to recognize precise and accurate requirements for the software project. The progression of information technology has presented various requirements elicitation techniques and therefore analysts are provided with various likely options. Generally, the analyst selects elicitation technique according to company practice or their individual knowledge and skills. It is undefined on the selection of best elicitation techniques for certain situations under particular constraints and circumstances. Several guidelines do exist in literature for technique selection but most technique are theoretical rather than practical. In this research paper, deep knowledge of principal elicitation techniques is explained. After that a five facets model is proposed to select elicitation technique in which major aspects are project characteristics, software development process categories, organizational characteristics, stakeholder characteristics and analyst characteristics. We also demonstrate the suitability of the proposed framework via case studies and verified how the model uses relative knowledge of problem domain to select appropriate requirements elicitation technique for the software under construction.

Knowledge management in requirement elicitation

The application of situational method engineering in requirements elicitation phase is investigated.A novel, simple and dynamic web-based tool, Situational Requirement Method System (SRMS), is deve...

Knowledge management in requirement elicitation: Situational methods view

In small-scale software development organizations, software engineers are beginning to realize the significance of adapting software development methods according to project conditions. There is a requirement to proliferate this know-how to other developers, who may be facing the same settings/context, so that they too can benefit from others’ experiences. In this paper, the application of situational method engineering in requirements elicitation phase is investigated. A novel, simple and dynamic web-based tool, Situational Requirement Method System (SRMS), is developed which can aid in conception/formulation, repository, and elicitation/derivation of methods related with this stage. The proposed approach and tool are validated by distributing a questionnaire among software professionals working in large software companies, and making SRMS accessible to them. The results indicate that a majority of the participants finds SRMS useful and provides various suggestions to improve it.

EVALUATION OF CAPTURING ARCHITECTURALLY SIGNIFICANT REQUIREMENTS

Every software development organization strives for customer satisfaction. It is universally accepted that the success of software development lies in the clear understanding of the client requirements. During requirement elicitation and analysis stage, the system analyst identifies the functional and non-functional requirements from the customer. Security, usability, reliability, performance, scalability and supportability are the significant quality attributes of a software system. These quality attributes are also referred as non-functional requirements. Only a few functional and quality attributes requirement help to identify and shape the software architecture. A software system’s architecture is the set of prime design decisions made about the system. If the requirement influences the architectural design decision then, it is referred as Architecturally Significant Requirement (ASR). Identifying and specifying all the possible ASR are important tasks in the requirement elicitation and analysis stage.In this research, general problems that are faced while capturing and specifying ASR in requirement elicitation and analysis is studied. Among the different requirement elicitation techniques, use case diagram has been identified and enhanced to solve the problem of capturing and specifying ASR during the requirement elicitation and analysis phase

Stakeholders Selection Model for Software Requirements Elicitation

Requirements elicitation is the most critical phase in software requirements engineering. The process is resource intensive, as it concerns with a lot of dedicated stakeholders gathering purposefully to present and stipulate software requirements. The extent of effectiveness of the process is greatly influenced by the suitability of the stakeholders in the process of gathering the requirements. Previous studies indicate that improper stakeholder selection normally lead to unsuccessful requirements elicitation process. Such phenomena would later cause serious impacts to projects such as costly rework, overrun schedule and poor quality software. This study addresses this issue by proposing a model for selecting the suitable stakeholders during requirements elicitation process. The study adopts both the quantitative data collection and analysis. The data gathering was done through survey questionnaire among 300 project managers and analysts. The study employs the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to analyse the quantitative data. The results indicate that selecting stakeholders with appropriate characteristics such as stakeholders role, knowledge and communication skills have significant effects on the requirements elicitation phase. The results also reveal that requirements elicitation phase has significant influence on requirements quality. This model is useful for project managers to decide on appropriate stakeholders who are going to be chosen based on their characteristics during requirements elicitation phase.

Mining unstructured data to support requirements elicitation by using controlled vocabularies: A systematic mapping study

This paper presents a work-in-progress that deals with the assessment of the use of controlled vocabularies during the processes of requirements engineering, as a means to mine data from different sources (interviews, contracts, schemas and diagrams). By doing this the requirements description, analysis and comprehension is facilitated for both developers and end users. As a research methodology, we decided to use a systematic mapping study covering the last fourteen years (2000 - 2014). As far as we know, such studies have not yet been done; however, the cost incurred from errors in the requirements elicitation phase is one of the problems that is most commonly reported by the practitioners. Our study includes data on the processes of building the controlled vocabulary and assesses the productivity and quality. We are also interested in tools and techniques to classify and retrieve information. Our first findings suggest that this is an under-research area.

StakeMeter: value-based stakeholder identification and quantification framework for value-based software systems.

Value-based requirements engineering plays a vital role in the development of value-based software (VBS). Stakeholders are the key players in the requirements engineering process, and the selection of critical stakeholders for the VBS systems is highly desirable. Based on the stakeholder requirements, the innovative or value-based idea is realized. The quality of the VBS system is associated with the concrete set of valuable requirements, and the valuable requirements can only be obtained if all the relevant valuable stakeholders participate in the requirements elicitation phase. The existing value-based approaches focus on the design of the VBS systems. However, the focus on the valuable stakeholders and requirements is inadequate. The current stakeholder identification and quantification (SIQ) approaches are neither state-of-the-art nor systematic for the VBS systems. The existing approaches are time-consuming, complex and inconsistent which makes the initiation process difficult. Moreover, the main motivation of this research is that the existing SIQ approaches do not provide the low level implementation details for SIQ initiation and stakeholder metrics for quantification. Hence, keeping in view the existing SIQ problems, this research contributes in the form of a new SIQ framework called ‘StakeMeter’. The StakeMeter framework is verified and validated through case studies. The proposed framework provides low-level implementation guidelines, attributes, metrics, quantification criteria and application procedure as compared to the other methods. The proposed framework solves the issues of stakeholder quantification or prioritization, higher time consumption, complexity, and process initiation. The framework helps in the selection of highly critical stakeholders for the VBS systems with less judgmental error.

Gquest: Modeling patient questionnaires and administering them through a mobile platform application

BackgroundThe use of surveys is becoming popular in the health care industry for acquiring information useful to the accomplishment of several studies. Besides their exploitation on a large scale for conducting epidemiological studies, surveys are being increasingly carried out on a narrower perspective through the administration of questionnaires aimed at assessing the quality of life perceived by patients or their clinical status during mid- or long-term treatments. This is useful for managing resources or optimizing and individualizing treatments. ObjectivesThis paper describes Gquest, a platform for modeling, generating and administering questionnaires through mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Gquest was motivated by the need of administering questionnaires during home treatments, albeit its applicability is rather general. The main requirement was to have a very simple, clean and easy to use platform able to support (a) physicians in the design and delivery of questionnaires and (b) outpatients in sending self-recorded outcomes to the clinical staff. MethodsGquest has two basic components. The first one is a model devised for representing questionnaires which is extremely flexible. It allows the generation of questions and answers of different types, supports adaptivity in the dialog with the user and enforces simple consistency rules for checking his input. The second component is an application able to run instances of those questionnaires. It downloads questionnaires over the air in terms of XML files from a server and stores them locally into the mobile repository. Questionnaires become then available to the user, who in our case is a patient or one of his relatives. The user can select which one to fill-in, according to his needs and/or the specific treatment protocol. The selected questionnaire may be filled-in all at once or be completed in subsequent steps over time since any input provided is persisted on a local database. Finally, when a questionnaire is closed all the answers are transparently synchronized to a server for further evaluation or statistical purposes. ResultsThe platform has been exploited and tested in two medical domains where questionnaires have very different purposes; a quality of life pilot survey involving patients with atrial fibrillation within the EU-funded project MobiGuide, and an investigation of the users’ needs during the requirements elicitation phase of a telemedicine project for the safe discharge of fragile patients. ConclusionsGquest proved to be a suitable tool for dealing with a wide variety of question types and has been positively accepted by the patients enrolled in the pilot study.

Engineering of requirements for a distributed teleteaching system

This work proposes a graph based requirement analysis approach and its verification methodology to address the challenges of requirements engineering in the context of a distributed teleteaching system. Requirements are generally expressed in natural language and in the absence or limited use of the requirements elicitation phase, verification of requirements and traceability of requirements to different artifacts of the subsequent phases becomes difficult. In this work we use i* diagrams, the well known standard for agent based requirements analysis. Then we propose Extended Means Ends Analysis (EMEA) with the addition of some new constructs. Next we define a transformation algorithm to derive a conceptual graph (CG) and propose a method for conceptual graph based requirements specification and its verification. A metrics based evaluation for performance measurement of the proposed method in terms of requirements traceability is presented.

An Assessment of Extreme Programming Based Requirement Engineering Process

Comprehensive requirement engineering (RE) process acts as a backbone of any successful project. RE processes are very complex because most of the requirement engineering documentation is written in natural languages, which are less formal and often distract the designers and developers of the system. To streamline different phases of the software lifecycle, first we need to model the requirement document so that we can analyze and integrate the software artifacts. Designers can ensure completeness and consistency of the system by generating models using the requirement documents. In this paper, we have made an attempt to analyze extreme programming based RE approach to understand its utility in the requirement elicitation phase. In this study, different RE process models are evaluated and a comparison of the extreme programming technique is drawn to highlight the merits of the latter technique over the conventional RE techniques.

Software secure building aspects in Computer Engineering

An application includes software and communications infrastructure. As for the latter there own solutions to focus on security, there to build secure software solutions. However, the construction of secure software remains a problem due to a strategy that proposes to incorporate security as an aspect to consider when it has implemented most or all of the functional requirements. The equal treatment of functional and security requirements is the starting point to ensure an improvement in software security. Incorporate security into every stage of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is another criterion that contributes and leads to a conceptually Secure SDLC. To this we must add a special emphasis on including security from the elicitation of requirements. In all cases the security treatment should be approached with criteria to allow evidence to be used best practices for its construction and the best solutions to meet security requirements. This paper presents criteria used to build secure software, incorporating Security Patterns, since requirements elicitation phase.

Verifying Properties of Scenarios with Fixed Points

During the requirements elicitation phase a software engineer tries to determine what the customer really wants (and needs.) This task requires, on the one hand, strong communication skills and, on the other hand, a good engineering background to construct a coherent set of requirements. There is a thus a conflict informal and formal techniques. Scenarios are a powerful communication tool and may be given a formal semantics so that they may be amenable to formal verification. We present a method to verifying properties of scenarios based on fixed points of predicate transformers. This work is adapted from an approach that had been originally proposed by Sifakis for transition systems. Scenarios are modelled in a similar way to Diijkstras guarded commands.

Stakeholder Conflict Resolution Model (S-CRM) Based On Supervised Learning

Various stakeholders are involved in the creation of software projects. In general, the higher the number of stakeholders involved during the requirements elicitation phase, the better are the chances of success for the project. However, it is rather difficult to consider the opinion of all the stakeholders owing to constraints on time and resources. Furthermore, conflicts between stakeholders can become inevitable when the number of stakeholders increases. Thus, the identification of key stakeholders is an important factor in ensuring the success of a project. In this paper, a methodical stakeholder conflict resolution model (s-CRM) is proposed by considering an actual industrial case study. The proposed model uses information gain based on entropy when measuring the impurity of information. We believe that the proposed s-CRM is effective in identifying the key stakeholders and in intuitively indicating those stakeholders whose elicited requirements need to be weighted. In addition, the model provides a solution for conflicts among stakeholders during requirements engineering.