Elicitação colaborativa de requisitos: um método com foco no engajamento

Abstract

Requirements Engineering is a fundamental and important step to achieve the success of a project, because, in addition to providing means to achieve goals imposed in the project, it also works on its maintenance over time. Requirements Engineering works on the understanding and perception of unique contexts and particularities to interpret the actions to which the problem is inserted. For this reason, the requirements elicitation phase cannot be seen only as a technological problem, since in this activity the social context is more critical than in the specification, design and programming phases. In this sense, communication comes in as an important factor to be taken into account throughout this process. Collaborative processes aim to make communication more efficient, however, studies point to limitations and recurring difficulties in maintaining clear, unambiguous communication between team members during the RE process. Considering this problem, it is possible to perceive from the literature that the lack of engagement of those involved in the requirements elicitation process affects team communication and collaboration. In addition, it is observed that Requirements Engineering has limitations in tools and mechanisms to measure and control the level of engagement of the software team. Since stakeholder engagement cannot be managed, it cannot be measured. From this demand, the objective of this work is to propose a method to measure and control the level of engagement during the requirements elicitation process, through resources present in project management tools. For this, an engagement method was created in order to increase stakeholder engagement levels during requirements elicitation. The method was applied in two phases in classes of the Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. As a result we can observe that the engagement method helped to guide the discussion of requirements elicitation, optimized the team’s communication and most students felt engaged during the elicitation process.