Requirements Elicitation Hans Van Vliet, Software Engineering: Principles and Practices, 3rd edition, Wiley (Chapter 3) 1

Requirements Elicitation Structured Interview: Purpose is to ask and answer questions concerning the problem being modeled Observation: Observe activities that are being modeled by the software Apprenticeship: Work next to personnel who perform tasks to learn about the task and how it is accomplished Ethnomethodology: Capture categories and methods that members of a group use to organize behavior rather than imposing categories and methods 2

Interview Outline-1 Introduction –Introduce yourself –Promise confidentiality –Reveal your focus –Set up the user as the expert –Establish format for interview –Get permission to record –Get an overview of the user’s work 3

Interview Outline-2 Interview –Structure questions Focus on customer, overall goals, and benefits Gain better understanding of the problem and the customer Understand the users, data, environment, services, constraints Focus on the effectiveness of the meeting –Ask for artifacts and walk through them Source of artifacts Process for creating artifact How it has been used and will be used –Draw the physical space, if applicable Wrap-up –Summarize and discuss next steps –Thank the user 4

Models to Facilitate Interview Flow: Flow of action between people and roles performed in service Sequence: Write steps in an activity sequence and identify triggers in action Artifact: Draw structure and define usage of a work artifact (source of information and destination of artifact) Physical: draw physical layout, location of things; location of people, network connections 5

In-class: Requirements elicitation techniques (In pair: 20 mins) For each of the following requirements elicitation techniques, discuss its advantages and disadvantages and identify a situation or project that the technique could be well-suited: Structured interview Observation Apprenticeship Survey 6