Using Expertise as a Framework for Evaluating Requirements Technology

The field of requirements engineering (RE) is rich with a myriad of technologies that aim to support activities within the requirements engineering process. These range from elicitation to management of RE work products. As such, the range and nature of these technologies are broad; this makes an evaluation of their effectiveness challenging. This position paper proposes an expertise framework as a basis for conducting comparative evaluation of RE technologies. Expertise is characterized using three dimensions: Practical Skill, Theoretical Knowledge, and Problem Domain. Expertise is increased by applying different processes to each dimension: Practical Skill needs to be abstracted; Theoretical Knowledge needs to be conditionalized, and Problem Domains need to be Contextualized. These dimensions and processes can be used as the basis for evaluating requirements tools and methods. In other words, to what extent does a particular technology raise the level of expertise for a requirements engineer by augmenting one of these processes? The framework is presented by applying it to evaluate four different techniques (ethnography, use cases, scenarios, and traceability matrix).