A New Approach to Software Requirements Elicitation

Abstract

Requirements elicitation is both the hardest and most critical part of software development, since errors at this beginning stage propagate through the development process and are the hardest to repair later. This paper proposes an improved process for requirements elicitation. The key improvements are: (1) to train the non-technical stakeholders (primarily the users) in the capabilities and limitations of computer hardware, software, and of software developers; (2) identify keywords while interviewing the stakeholders, visually as well as in text form; (3) use keyword mapping to generate candidate system requirements; (4) apply the techniques of quality function deployment (QFD) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) during the elicitation process.