A survey on global requirements elicitation issues and proposed research framework

Requirements Elicitation is a practice [1] that aids in determining the needs of customers, users and stakeholders in building systems and software that can result in a high probability of satisfying such needs. Requirements Elicitation is the most complex part of the Requirements Engineering (RE) phases and demands as much attention, especially in Global Software Development scenarios, so as to minimize the impacts of failures. On one side, researchers and practitioners are cognizant of the fact that most project failures are attributed to poor requirements. On the other side, there are several recommendations, tools, methods, etc. available to overcome the said issues pertaining to requirements. Despite such recommendations, challenges still “persist”. This paper attempts to understand the issues that impact effectiveness and efficiencies of global requirements elicitation through literature reviews and discussions with practitioners. This paper proposes a research framework to reflect the state-of-the-art and state-of-the practice requirement elicitation issues that currently exist and also provide critical guidance that elicitation issues and uncertainty have on the overall RE success.