Environment Assertion Driven Requirements Elicitation: A Preliminary Study

As the dependency on software systems grows, software developers need to be able to identify and meet the requirements for a system. In his prominent research, Jackson shows that both environment assertions and requirements reside together in the environment. Due to this close relation, it is natural that there is a form of influence between the two. Existing literature indicates the importance of environment assertions in different software engineering activities, including requirements-based testing. However, little is known about the influence of environment assertions in requirements elicitation. In this paper, we perform a preliminary study involving 48 developers and a prominent online conferencing software application, Webex. The results of our study suggest that environment assertions positively influence requirements elicitation activities. To that end, this preliminary study opens a new avenue for requirements engineering researchers and practitioners.