Stakeholders Selection Model for Software Requirements Elicitation

Abstract

Requirements elicitation is the most critical phase in software requirements engineering. The process is resource intensive, as it concerns with a lot of dedicated stakeholders gathering purposefully to present and stipulate software requirements. The extent of effectiveness of the process is greatly influenced by the suitability of the stakeholders in the process of gathering the requirements. Previous studies indicate that improper stakeholder selection normally lead to unsuccessful requirements elicitation process. Such phenomena would later cause serious impacts to projects such as costly rework, overrun schedule and poor quality software. This study addresses this issue by proposing a model for selecting the suitable stakeholders during requirements elicitation process. The study adopts both the quantitative data collection and analysis. The data gathering was done through survey questionnaire among 300 project managers and analysts. The study employs the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to analyse the quantitative data. The results indicate that selecting stakeholders with appropriate characteristics such as stakeholders role, knowledge and communication skills have significant effects on the requirements elicitation phase. The results also reveal that requirements elicitation phase has significant influence on requirements quality. This model is useful for project managers to decide on appropriate stakeholders who are going to be chosen based on their characteristics during requirements elicitation phase.