Common mistakes of student analysts in requirements elicitation interviews

Abstract

Context and Motivation: Customer-analyst interviews are among the most common techniques for eliciting requirements. However, students of computer science-related disciplines have little material and time for learning how to perform an effective interview. As a result, once out of the class, the effectiveness of analysts in interviewing highly depends on their experience. Question/problem: Since learning from failures is recognised as a wise strategy for professional improvement, this work aims at identifying communication mistakes of student requirements analysts. Principal idea/results: We conducted a case study involving 36 students to which we gave a typical introduction to requirements elicitation interviews. Then, we arranged and recorded 18 elicitation interviews involving the students. The interview recordings were analysed by interview experts. The experts produced a list of 9 main communication mistakes, which we report in this paper. Contribution: This is the first work that provides a concise list of mistakes of student analysts, with corrective recommendations and examples. It can be useful for instructors of software engineering courses, as well as for practitioners, who may commit the same mistakes of the students without being aware of it.