Study: Population targeted requirements acquisition
Problem:The development of services, products, and information systems should focus on customer needs and preferences. Understanding the customers requires frequent interactions with them. However, this procedure is often perceived costly, difficult, and even unproductive. Because of these issues, companies may fail to acquire important requirements from potential key customers. Missing such valuable insights during design and development is likely to lead in sub-optimal performance of the outcomes.
How it was studied:The design and evaluation of this framework resulted from the engagement with more than 200 participants in five organizations. Since its introduction, the framework has been applied in more than 20 projects in various organizations and industries. The study was conducted in five stages: (1) identifying specific problems related to requirements acquisition for different populations; (2) building the theoretical foundations from five social science theories; (3) apply the theoretical foundation in addressing practical objectives; (4) formulating a framework for acquiring the system requirements from a specific customer population with five key principles and (5) evaluating the framework with practitioners.
Take away:We propose a framework for acquiring the requirements from a specific customer population. Five key principles of the framework are identified:
Principle 1: Knowledge capture
Principle 2: Subpopulation knowledge capture
Principle 3: Ability to inspire beneficial functionality
Principle 4: Participation ability
Principle 5: Convergent understanding