Visual support for requirement elicitation techniquePresented by,Nithin Shenoy Nimmy Joshy

GuideDr. A. Serebrenik (TU/e)Barbara Pareglio (Ericsson)

Introduction• Requirement elicitation

• Process of discovering the requirements for a system by communication with customers, system users and others who have a stake in the system development[1].

• Importance• First step towards identifying the “Right things to do”

and “Doing the things right”

• Challenges• Ambiguous requirements,• Assumed requirements• Conflicting requirements

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Requirement elicitation with visualization

• Picture = 1000 words!!!

• Better understanding of requirements

• Can help identify new requirements

• Better way of keeping track of requirements

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Objective

• Literature study of requirement elicitation techniques.• Feasibility study of visual support for requirement

elicitation techniques in Ericsson.

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Requirement elicitation techniques

• Categories [2]• Conversational

− Interviews, focus group, workshop, brainstorming

• Observational− Task Observation, protocol analysis

• Analytic methods− Card sorting, Laddering

• Collaborative− Scenarios/Use cases, prototyping

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• So many elicitation techniques

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Which elicitation

technique to choose?

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Framework to choose elicitation techniques

• A framework is required to decide on elicitation techniques to be used based on the project [4].

• Decision making needs two types of information • Attributes• Recommendations on adequacy

• The attributes describing the same context are grouped into factors.

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• Different factors identified

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Factors

Elicitation process

Problem domainInformantElicitor

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Elicitor

Training in elicitation techniques

Elicitation experience

Experience with elicitation

techniques

Familiarity with domain

High

Low

Zero

… … …

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• Elicitor attributes

Contd..

• Recommendations on adequacy of techniques for certain values of attributes

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Visualization support

• Commonly used elicitation technique is interviews• Open ended • Closed

• Identification of visualization tools

• Visualization using mind mapping technique

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Visualization Tools

• Some of the tools identified • Free Mind• XMIND• VUE (Visual Understanding Environment)

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Example – FreeMind

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Future work

• Applicability of visualization tool for other requirement elicitation techniques

• Feasibility study of visual support for requirement elicitation techniques.

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References

[1] “Requirements Engineering A good practice guide,” Ian Sommerville and Pete Sawyer, John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

[2] “Effective Requirements Development - A Comparison of Requirements Elicitation techniques,” Zheying Zhang, SQM2007 conference, 2007.

[3] “ACRE: Selecting Methods for Requirement Acquisition”, N.A.M. Maiden, G. Rugg, Software engineering journal, May 1996.

[4] “Study of Elicitation Techniques Adequacy”, Dante Carrizo, Oscar Dieste, Natalia Juristo, 11th Workshop in Requirement Engineering, 2008.

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Questions

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