D.Ing. (Engineering Management) / The requirements discipline is at the heart of systems engineering, software engineering and business analysis. When a solution needs to be developed, built or bought that will be useful to the users and that will achieve the intended business goals, the problem needs to be understood before a possible solution can be developed. This process of understanding the problem that needs to be solved and what the solution should achieve is referred to as the requirements process. Requirements are the input to the solution development process. If the requirements are incorrect, the developed solution will not be useful. The purpose of this study was to discover the social behaviour of practitioners that causes the communication breakdowns during the requirements engineering process. Requirements emerge from the social interaction and communication between the requirements practitioner and the various stakeholders. The main problems with the requirements engineering process are communication and coordination breakdowns, as well as the lack of domain knowledge or understanding of the problem. These challenges are all related to the social interaction during the requirements engineering process that impacts the quality of requirements. Researchers have made significant progress in the development of methodologies. Tools and techniques are available for improving the quality of requirements. However, in practice, requirements are still produced with errors which then leads to unsuccessful solutions to problems. The requirements engineering process is executed within a social context. These social elements should be taken into consideration to improve quality. Based on the results collected from real-world practice as well as people’s behaviour in the real world, a complete understanding of the influence on the requirements process was derived. This understanding was used to identify the social elements required during the requirements engineering process. A socio-technical view is provided of the social and the technical activities that should be facilitated by the requirements engineering process. This framework integrates the required communicative activities with the traditional requirements activity. This socio-technical framework for the requirements engineering process was developed based on a survey. The aim of this framework is to overcome the social behaviour that causes communication breakdowns and impacts on the quality of the requirements. The research contributes to the existing requirements knowledge base. The socio-technical framework developed for the requirements process concerns the communication breakdowns continuously highlighted as a contributing factor to poor requirements, by providing the social activities required during the requirements process as guidance. Secondly, the knowledge acquired provides adequate data on requirements practice for future research. Specific focus areas for practitioners and managers on how to improve the requirements engineering process without the adoption of any new tools or methodologies are also included in the results. Additionally, practitioners’ behaviour was determined. By determining these interaction and relationship patterns, communication can be improved and made more effective.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:7858 |
| Date | 09 December 2013 |
| Creators | Marnewick, Annlizé |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Johannesburg |
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