SHF: Small: RUI: Before, during, and after requirements elicitation interviews: a comprehensive support for improving the quality of requirements

需求工程是一组活动，涉及确定和沟通对新产品或修改产品的期望，以及它将在其中使用的环境。需求引出，即收集这些特性的实践，称为需求，是这些活动中的第一个，并且被认为是软件系统开发中的关键和困难阶段。在现有的启发技术中，与利益相关者的访谈是实践中最常用的。通常，它们涉及两个参与者：客户和需求分析师；他们的目标是允许知识从第一个转移到第二个，以便分析人员可以收集精确、正确和完整的需求。访谈的重要性已被广泛认识，许多可能影响访谈中知识转移的因素已被分析。然而，目前还没有研究一种全面的方法来提高需求引出访谈的有效性和质量。本研究旨在通过提供一套新颖的技术和工具来支持分析师在访谈之前，期间和之后填补这一空白。“之前的支持”具体体现在为学生和没有经验的分析师开发培训中，以动手的方式教他们如何进行访谈，如何避免最常见的错误，以及如何识别模棱两可的情况并利用它们来发现隐藏的知识。这部分研究还包括为本科生开设一门课程，使他们能够更好地发展他们作为分析师的技能。“期间支持”是一种基于工具的方法，它使用生物反馈和语音分析来帮助分析师在面试期间识别客户日益增加的沮丧程度，这可能会导致分析师的不信任。最后，“事后支持”由一个协议组成，该协议使用外部观察者来分析记录的采访，以从中提取额外的知识，并可能识别额外的常见错误。这项研究有可能极大地改进需求引出过程，从而改进软件开发过程。这可以带来更好的软件，从而使使用和依赖软件的大部分人受益。

Requirements engineering is the set of activities concerned with determining and communicating the expectations for a new or modified product, and the contexts in which it will be used. Requirements elicitation, i.e., the practice of collecting these features, called requirements, is the first of these activities and is recognized as a critical and difficult stage in the development of software systems. Among the available elicitation techniques, interviews with stakeholders are the most commonly used in practice. Normally, they involve two actors: a customer and a requirements analyst; and their goal is to allow the knowledge transfer from the first to the second one so that the analyst can collect precise, correct, and complete requirements. The importance of interviews is widely recognized and many of the factors that might affect the knowledge transfer in interviews have been analyzed. However, a comprehensive approach to improve the effectiveness and the quality of requirements elicitation interviews has not been studied yet. This research aims at filling this gap by providing a set of novel techniques and tools to support the analyst before, during, and after the interview.The "before support" is concretized in developing a training for students and inexperienced analysts to teach them, with a hands-on approach, how to perform interviews, how to avoid the most common mistakes, and how to recognize ambiguous situations and exploit them to discover hidden knowledge. This part of the research includes also the creation of a course for undergraduate students to allow them to better develop their skills as analysts. The "during support" is a tool-based approach which uses biofeedback and voice analysis to help the analyst during the interview in identifying the increasing level of frustration in the customer, which might cause mistrust in the analyst. Finally, the "after support" consists of a protocol that uses an external observer to analyze recorded interviews to extract additional knowledge from them and possibly to identify additional common mistakes. This research has the potential to dramatically improve the requirements elicitation process, and consequently the software development process. This can lead to better software, thus benefiting the large segment of the population that uses and relies on software.