Interview patterns for requirements elicitation

Abstract

[Context and motivation] The requirements engineer as a link between software makers and software users is a firmly established role. However, people from a variety of backgrounds execute this role, making standardization, uniformity, and maturity of the role very difficult. [Question/problem] In this paper, we provide an initial step towards easy to understand support for the execution of requirements elicitation interviews. [Principal ideas/results] We present our work in progress on a framework for analyzing the types of questions used during requirements elicitation interviews, what responses they elicit and to what extent those responses are of desirable quality. [Contribution] Successful requirements engineering strongly depends on the right questions being asked in such a way that the user stakeholder can provide the right details in his response. Identifying these questions and guiding inexperienced requirements engineers during this challenging task promises to improve the quality of requirements elicitations. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.