Assessing effectiveness of recommendations to requirements-related problems through interviews with experts

Abstract

Requirements Engineering and Business Analysis are known as very important to software project outcome but also difficult activities., coping with many problems and challenges. The work reported in this paper was preceded by a survey which revealed most common requirements-related problems in Polish IT industry. We addressed ten most frequently reported problems by reviewing the literature for recommendations how to cope with those problems. The resulting set of recommendations is included in the paper. Next., we conducted interviews with three experienced IT analysts asking them to assess effectiveness of particular recommendations., based on their experience. The results show significant differences in assessments and indicate that effectiveness is dependent on contextual factors to a large extent. Our conclusion is that a follow-up work is required to document more recommendations and to annotate them with guidelines about applicability., intended context of use and possible pitfalls.