8/17/2019 Requirements Elicitation Approaches, A Systematic Review

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Requirements Elicitation Approaches: A SystematicReview

Aldrin Jaramillo Franco

Engineering Faculty - University of Antioquia

Medellín – Colombia

aldrin.jaramillo@udea.edu.co 

 Abstract : in recent years, the Requirements Engineering

community has dedicated a lot of efforts in order to tackle the

Requirements Elicitation (RE) problem. Although important

advances have been reached, the RE processes still present

challenges that remain between the most critical research topics in

the Requirements Engineering community agenda. In order to

understand the progress that has been made in the RE field we ask:

what approaches exist which supports RE in software developmentprocesses? To answer this question we have made a systematic

review of works performed during the last 25 years (1989 – 2014)

resulting in 497 publications. From these results, this paper reports

on the main characteristics of each proposal like: purpose, sources

of requirements required, target produced, type of knowledge

representation used, and types of resources, methods and tools

required to accomplish their goal. We also identify the prominent

issues of interest for the researchers, and the most influential works

and trends over time. We argue that the results of this work are

relevant toward understanding the state of the art in RE, providing

insights on the relevant issues and perspectives that should be

considered in future proposals.

 Keywords:   Requirements elicitation;  Systematic literature review,

 State of the art in requirements elicitation.

I. 

I NTRODUCTION 

This paper aims at understanding the progress that has beenmade in the RE field during the last 25 years. More specificallywe are interested in answer the research question: whatapproaches exist that supports RE in software development

 processes? We detail this overarching question by investigatingrelevant characteristics of the identified works. To accomplishthis purpose, taking into account the work of Kitchenham et al.[1], [2], we have conducted a Systematic Literature Review(SLR), which results in 497 publications. This paper presentscontributions for researchers and practitioners who can have a

 better understanding of the RE evolution during the last 25years. In addition, the obtained results provide insights on therelevant issues and perspectives that should be considered infuture proposals. The resulting repository of RE approaches isavailable online; we hope that this resource will facilitate thedevelopment of future works aimed to contribute to the RE field.

II. 

SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW METHODOLOGY 

In order to answer the overarching question “RQ0. whatapproaches exist which support requirements elicitation insoftware development processes?” we have defined a set of

inclusion / exclusion criteria, which delimit the scope of theSystematic Literature Review (SLR); a summary of thesecriteria is presented in Table I.1 The search was limited to thelast 25 years (since 1989 to 2014). Some definitions used toestablish the study scope are: Approach: an “approach” is asystematic arrangement, usually in steps, of ideas or actionsintended to deal with a problem or situation [3]. Method: a“method” consists of heuristics and guidelines for therequirements engineer at different stages of a process. [4].Technique: a “technique” is a way of doing something or a

 practical method applied to some particular task [3].For each identified approach, we are interested in solving the

following detailed research questions (Table II): RQ1. Whatsources of requirements are required by the approach? RQ2.What is the purpose of the approach? What targets are produced

 by the approach? RQ3. What knowledge is represented in theapproach? How is represented? RQ4. How the requirements arediscovered? What methods are used by the approach? In ourSLR we followed a two-steps process; the first step made asystematic search in several scientific databases: IEEE,SPRINGER, ACM, DBLP and SCOPUS. The second stepconsisted in a snowball process over the publications obtainedfrom the previous step. Fig. 1 summarizes the SLR process.

Considering our research questions and scope we defined thefollowing search string: (“elicitation” OR “gathering” OR“acquisition” OR “discovery”) AND (“requirements” OR“functional requirements” OR “non-functional requirements”) AND (“approach” OR “proposal” OR “method”).  Weconsolidated the results in a document which is availableonline. 2  This repository of tagged proposals facilitated theanswer to the research questions as presented in the next section.

 Note: some of the selected approaches make reference to

Requirements Engineering approaches; nevertheless, theydescribe in detail their Requirements Elicitation process due thiswe have considered relevant for our research.

III. 

SLR  RESULTS 

In relation to RQ0. What approaches exist which allow the

requirements elicitation in software development processes? The identified publications were found in the following

1 Tables and graphics can be found in http://goo.gl/OPcHmp 2 http://goo.gl/b2wI5p 

978-1-4673-6630-4/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 

8/17/2019 Requirements Elicitation Approaches, A Systematic Review

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scientific databases: IEEE provided 56% (279 publications),SPRINGER 23% (114 p.), ACM 9% (46 p.), SCOPUS 6% (29

 p.) and other databases 6% (29 p.). Fig. 2 shows the publications per database. We noted that most of publications (56%) werefound in IEEE database being preferred by the RE community todate. Fig. 3 shows that 68% (340 p.) corresponds to conferencesfollowed by journals 27% (133 p.); 4% (19 p.) are book chaptersand 1% (5 p.) corresponds to books. These results show howconferences are by far the main mean of knowledge socializationfor the RE community. In order to establish the evolution of the

RE field in the last 25 years, we have defined two periods ofcomparison: period 1, since 1989 to 2001 and period 2, since2002 to 2014. Fig. 4 presents the number of publications in eachof these periods. We observe a remarkable increase of proposals(362 p.) during the last period in comparison with the first one(135 p.); this puts in evidence the progressive interest and effortdedicated by researchers and practitioners in the search forsolutions to the challenges posed by RE processes. This alsocould be an important indicator of the growing relevance of REissues not only for academia but also for industry. RQ1.Sources of requirements. Table III shows that the main sourcesin both periods are: Domain knowledge, Initial requirements andStakeholders goals. We can see that in period 1, researchers

consider that these sources are equally relevant; nevertheless,this changes in period 2 where Stakeholders goals are given

 priority (63 p.) over Initial requirements (39 p.) and Domainknowledge (37 p.). We can also observe how some importantsources in period 1 (ERP and business processes, Situations,arguments, selected strategies and options, and Use cases) havelost relevance in the second period. Likewise, in the last periodwe note the emergence of sources like Business process models,Security goals, privacy goals and attacks, and Legal texts. RQ2.Purpose and target. Fig. 5. The first period shows a dominantline of works in FRs (60 p.); meanwhile, proposals on NFRsappear in an incipient form (7 p.). The elicitation of FRs and

 NFRs also appears in an important manner being the second

research stream (46 p.). Other works (i. e. groundwork)constitute the third priority for researchers (22 p.). On the otherhand, important changes occurred in the second period incomparison to the first one: the main line of researchcorresponds to FRs and NFRs (143 p.), the second priority is theline of FRs (118 p.), in third place we find research on NFRs (70

 p.) and the fourth line of work corresponds to other proposals(31 p.). RQ3. Knowledge and representation used. The mainforms of knowledge representation used in both periods areScenarios and Goal models. In the first period researchers useScenarios and Goal models in similar proportions (21 p. and 19

 p. respectively). Otherwise, in the last period there is a wide preference for Goal models (75 p.) over Scenarios (32 p.). We

also observe that Viewpoint models, Conceptual meta-modelsand Goal obstacles are diminishing in their use during the last

 period. Besides, we note the emergence of Security models, Usecases and Ontologies. These results are condensed in Table IV.RQ4. Methods.  Considering methods, we have grouped theapproaches into categories which extend those proposed by vanLamsweerde [5] and Wieringa and Daneva [6]. Table Vsummarizes these results. Most used categories in both periodsare Reference-model-based approaches, Goal-based reasoningand Scenario-based elicitation and validation. Reference-model-

 based approaches are the most used methods in both periods.However, we observe in the first period that Scenario-basedelicitation and validation approaches (31 p.) are more used thanGoal-based reasoning approaches (21 p.); this situation changesdrastically in the second period where Goal-based reasoningapproaches (75 p.) are preferred over Scenario-based elicitationand validation approaches (38 p.). In contrast with the first

 period, in the last years we perceive an increasing interest inmethods like Creativity and collaborative-based approaches,Pattern-based approaches, Quality-model-based approaches,Quality-verification-based approaches and Requirements reuseamong others. Finally, in order to identify the most influential

 proposals, we have consulted and consolidated the number ofcitations of each publication in IEEE, ACM, SCOPUS andGoogle scholar databases; the main of these results appear inTable VIII. Considering these outcomes, it is important tohighlight the influence of the works of van Lamsweerde et al.

who has 4 publications in the top ten most cited papers;Mylopoulos et al. 3 p., Scheer 1 p., Yu 1 p. and Rolland et al. 1p.We also note that these publications are mainly related toAgents-based approaches (REA-458, 265, 268), Reference-model-based approaches (REA-417), Groundwork (REA-452),Goal-based reasoning (REA-492, 454), Quality-model-basedapproaches (REA-453, 274) and Scenario-based approaches(REA-357). This puts in evidence the noteworthy interest of theRE community for these types of solutions.

IV. 

CONCLUSIONS

In relation to the Sources of requirements  used by the proposals, we found that in last period, Stakeholders goals are

the most used input. Furthermore, we observe the emergence ofBusiness process models, Security goals, privacy goals, andattacks and Legal texts as relevant entries for the approaches.Regarding the Purpose and target of the approaches, in recentyears (second period) we observe an important increase of

 proposals in all lines of research: FRs, NFRs, FRs and NFRs,and Groundwork. We also note a growing interest especially inthe lines of “FRs and NFRs” and NFRs elicitation; this could bean important indicator of the growing relevance of RE issues notonly for academia but also for industry. As to the Knowledgeand representation used, we found that Goal models are by farthe preferred form of knowledge representation in last years,followed by Scenarios, Security goals, Use cases and

Ontologies. Regarding the Methods used by the proposals, inrecent years we observe a significant growth on the use of Goal-

 based reasoning approaches; meanwhile, Scenario-basedapproaches have lost terrain but still are protagonists in thescene. We also note a remarkable bet for other methods likeSecurity and privacy-based approaches, Creativity andCollaborative-based approaches, Pattern-based approaches,Quality-model-based approaches, Quality-verification-basedapproaches and Requirements reuse among others. We estimatethat these methods have been mainly fostered by challenges oftrends like internet, mobility and the need for innovation amongothers; therefore, they will play an important role in the future.

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