Specific Techniques 3: Interactive Approaches

The aim of this chapter is to introduce techniques which will assist the Requirements Engineer (RE)* in understanding the work of users. The techniques introduced here have a common theme of ‘interaction’: that is, they cause the Requirements Engineer to interact with the users. This approach is in contrast to more traditional ‘requirements elicitation’ techniques where the RE has a predefined model of what he or she is looking for. For example, using structured analysis techniques, the RE studies the work of the user in order to find processes, data, inputs and outputs; using an object-oriented approach the RE is looking for objects, services and messages; or using a task analysis approach the RE is looking for user tasks, task hierarchies and actions on objects. Using other techniques such as interviewing or issuing questionnaires also relies on the RE having some pre-defined notion of what he or she wants to find.