Enhancing Analysts’ Mental Models for Improving Requirements Elicitation: A Two-stage Theoretical Framework and Empirical Results
Authors: Vitharana, Padmal; Zahedi, Fatemeh; Jain, Hemant
Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (2016)
DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00444
Research has extensively documented the importance of accurate system requirements in avoiding project delays, cost overruns, and system malfunctions. Requirement elicitation (RE) is a critical step in determining system requirements. While much research on RE has emerged, a deeper understanding of three aspects could help significantly improve RE: 1) insights about the role and impacts of support tools in the RE process, 2) the impact of using support tools in multiple stages of the RE process, and 3) a clear focus on the multiplicity of perspectives in assessing RE outcomes. To understand how using support tools could improve RE, we rely on the theoretical lens of mental models (MM) to develop a dynamic conceptual model and argue that analysts form mental models (MMs) of the system during RE and these MMs impact their outcome performance. We posit that one can enhance analysts’ MMs by using a knowledgebased repository (KBR) of components and services embodying domain knowledge specific to the target application during two key stages of RE, which results in improved RE outcomes. We measured the RE outcomes from user and analyst perspectives. The knowledge-based component reposito…