Role of Human Aspects on the process of Software Requirement Elicitation

Abstract

Requirement elicitation process requires collaboration with people of different backgrounds and expertise. Collaboration between diverse teams such as developers, testers, designers, requirement engineers, and stakeholders makes requirement elicitation process highly human dependent. The main goal of this research is to find out the role and importance of “human aspects” such as domain knowledge, motivation, communication skills, gender, age personality, attitude, geographical distribution, emotions, and cultural diversity in requirement elicitation activities. The purpose of this study is to identify the industrial perspectives of key human aspects that will help organizations to carry out RE-related activities more effectively. To fulfill that purpose, we surveyed 165 software practitioners and elicited the industrial perspective through their responses. Practitioner’s data revealed that requirement elicitation activities are highly human-dependent, 90% of practitioners were of the view that the success of requirement engineering activities depends on the individuals engaged in those activities. Software practitioner’s data revealed that domain knowledge (84%), motivation (68%), communication skills (61%), and personality (41%) are the highly important aspect for the individual engaged in requirement engineering activities. Furthermore, the data revealed that the correctness (73%) of identified requirements is a highly important factor in measuring the performance of the person involved in the RE process. Simultaneously, the clarity (78%) and the completeness (75%) of identified requirements are also important. Our results suggest that the individual engaged in the requirement engineering process should have the social and collaborative (89%), enthusiastic (94%), altruistic (kind, generous, trustworthy, and helpful) (67%) qualities to be able to carry out RE activities effectively. Our survey suggests that the practitioners may consider the findings of this research appropriately when forming, managing teams, and conducting software requirement elicitation activities.