Requirements elicitation issues and project performance: A test of a contingency model

A contingency model that depicted the influence of requirements elicitation issues on project performance suggest that lower degree of requirement elicitation issues result in a higher degree of project performance and vice versa. The empirical study of this model led to two critical observations — firstly, it was predicted that increasing degree of elicitation issues is directly proportional to residual performance risk; secondly, higher levels of residual performance risk is inversely proportional to project performance, thereby confirming that a decrease (increase) in the effects of residual performance risk will increase (decrease) the effects of project performance. This study is an extension to the author's research related to the empirical validation of the theoretical model that establishes a relationship between elicitation issues and overall project performance. It is important to validate and confirm the effectiveness of the outcomes from the empirical validation; this study attempts to apply the key outcomes from the empirical validation of the contingency model to real-time projects of large globally distributed organizations. 10 projects were randomly selected based on predefined criteria. The survey results provided reasonable support for the contingency model predictions. The statistical validation of responses indicated positive influence on the requirements engineering phase by minimizing key elicitation issues and thereby contributing towards a good project performance. Based on such statistical observations and feedbacks obtained from project stakeholders on the contingency model observations, it was concluded that the outcomes and recommendations of this contingency model can be extended in a large scale in research and practice, for stakeholders to experience benefits of effective elicitation in software developments projects.