Learn How to Select the "Right" Requirements Elicitation Technique

Tuesday, September 10^th from 9⁰⁰ - 12³⁰

Target Audience: Requirements practitioners, requirements analysts, requirements writers, requirements managers

Tutorial Outcome: In this tutorial, participants will learn how to improve the probability of developing systems that satisfy customers' needs by selecting the "right" requirements elicitation techniques. They will be able to return to their work places armed with the rare knowledge of how to select (from the hundreds of available techniques) the most appropriate elicitation techniques to use in any given situation. As a result, they will be more effective in their jobs by helping to contribute to the definition of systems that better meet the needs of their customers. This is especially important in environments where requirements are ill-defined or constantly changing.

Topics Covered:

1. Learn about the problems associated with ineffective requirements elicitation and why choosing the "right" requirements elicitation technique for a specific situation can help avoid those problems.
2. Participate in a series of role-playing exercises where "analysts" interview "customers" and "developers" to understand the situation (for that exercise/project), select the requirements elicitation techniques to use in that situation and explain why those were the "right" techniques.
3. Learn about our proposed requirements elicitation technique selection process and the results of our interviews/observations of expert analysts that guided development of that process.
4. Apply our proposed technique selection process to the your own projects and then compare the techniques selected via that process with those you would have used in the absence of such a process.
5. Provide feedback on the effectiveness of our proposed technique selection process.

Al Davis is professor of information systems at U. of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He is CEO of Omni-Vista. Previously, he was a VP at BTG and Director of the SW Technology Cntr at GTE Labs. He is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of IEEE Software, an editor for J. of Systems and Software, and author of Software Requirements and 201 Principles of Software Development. He is a fellow of IEEE, and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U. of Illinois.

Ann Hickey is an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and has extensive program management, systems analysis, and requirements elicitation experience. Her research focuses on scenarios, collaborative requirements elicitation, and elicitation technique selection. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Arizona.

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