Research On Key Technologies Of Software Requirements Elicitation Process

The process of requirements elicitation is in the initial stage of the front-end softwaredevelopment. It performs throughout the project of software development. Requirementselicitation determines directly the success or failure of the project.By the analysis and summary of the existing process of requirements elicitation, and theresearches of the advantages and disadvantages about the methods of requirements elicitationand prioritizing requirements, some novel ideals and algorithms were proposed in this paper.In addition, an example was given to verify the feasibility and rationality of these algorithmsand methods.The main researches of this paper are on the following:(1)The algorithm of requirements elicitation based on requirements pattern matching wasproposed. According to reusability and completeness of the requirements that were reflectedeffectively by the requirements patterns and requirements templates in the project, thealgorithm of requirements elicitation based on requirements pattern matching was proposed.User requirements were elicited by requirements pattern that were selected by patternmatching. The criteria that were used to estimate the completeness of requirements wereintroduced. It further improved the completeness of requirements elicitation.(2)The algorithm of setting the highest priority of requirements based on theinterpretative structural model was proposed. According to the interdependences ofrequirements that were often ignored in the existing methods,the layering of requirementswas emerged by modeling about interpretative structural model. Then, the fact that it couldn’thave circuit in structure graph of function was solved by the abstracting or refining of model.Following, the multi-level hierarchical directed graph was elicited by interpretative structuralmodel, and the operation of the sets was applied to the area of graph. Final, the set of thehighest priority of requirements was got.(3)The method of prioritizing requirements based on the structuring analytical hierarchyprocess was proposed. According to the algorithm based on interpretative structural modelthat prioritized the highest priority of requirements by qualitative analysis,the method ofprioritizing requirements was proposed in a quantitative way. The method was based on the combination of interpretative structural model and analytical hierarchy process, and calledstructuring analytical hierarchy process. The analysis of case was given, and the strengths andweaknesses of analytical hierarchy process and the method were compared. The results showthat this method is better than analytical hierarchy process and ranking as s whole, and canimprove the rationality of the prioritizing requirements.(4)A risk-derived algorithm for prioritizing the solution of requirements combinationwas proposed. According to the fact that requirements elicited was incomplete, eased tochange and risk factor was often ignored, the algorithm that was based on analysis ofinterpretative structural model, a backtracking algorithm of0-1knapsack problem, cost asconstraint conditions, the requirements with the max value that were selected, and some setsof requirements that were generated was proposed. Then, the solutions of requirementscombination were prioritized by Wiegers’ method and analytical hierarchy process after thecost, value, and risk were considered adequately. An iteration of software project was endwhen the only solution of requirements combination was selected and realized. It was carriedon until all user requirements were implemented.In this paper, the analysis of case was given. The results show that these algorithms andmethods can improve the efficiency of requirements elicitation; the completeness andreusability of requirements, the rationality of the prioritizing requirements, and the solution ofthe conflict among stakeholders and enhance significantly the success probability of theproject.