Towards the elicitation of hidden domain factors from clients and users during the design of software systems

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on how requirements for a new software development system are elicited and what pitfalls could cause a software development project to fail if the said requirements are not captured correctly. A number of existing requirements elicitation methods, namely: JAD (Joint Application Design), RAD (Rapid Application Development), a Formal Specifications Language (Z), Natural Language, UML (Unified Modelling Language) and Prototyping are covered. The aforementioned techniques are then integrated into existing software development life cycle models, such as the Waterfall model, Rapid Prototyping model, Build and Fix model, Spiral model, Incremental model and the V-Process model. Differences in the domains (knowledge and experience of an environment) of a client and that of the software development team are highlighted and this is done diagrammatically using the language of Venn diagrams. The dissertation also refers to a case study highlighting a number of problems during the requirements elicitation process, amongst other the problem of tacit knowledge not surfacing during elicitation. Two new requirements elicitation methodologies are proposed namely: the SRE (Solitary Requirements Elicitation) and the DDI (Developer Domain Interaction) methodology. These two methods could potentially be more time consuming than other existing requirements elicitation methods, but the benefits could outweigh the cost of their implementation, since the new proposed methods have the potential to further facilitate the successful completion of a software development project. Following the introduction of the new requirements elicitation methods, they are then applied to the aforementioned case study and highlight just how the hidden domain of the client may become more visible, because the software development team has gained a deeper understanding of the client’s working environment. They have therefore increased their understanding of how the final product needs to function in order to fulfil the set out requirements correctly. Towards the end of the dissertation a summary and a conclusion as well as future work that could be undertaken in this area are provided.