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Applying a pragmatics-based creativity-fostering technique to requirements elicitation

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Abstract

This paper proposes the application to requirements elicitation of an innovative creativity fostering technique based on a model of the pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM). The EPM has been used to define a creative process, called EPMcreate (EPM Creative Requirements Engineering TEchnique) that consists of sixteen steps. In each step, the problem is analyzed according to one elementary behavior identified by the EPM. Each behavior suggests that the analyst look at the problem from a different combination of users’ viewpoints. The feasibility and effectiveness of the technique in requirements elicitation was demonstrated by experiments on two projects with very different characteristics. Each experiment compared the performances of two analysis teams, one of which used EPMcreate and the other of which used brainstorming. The results of both experiments highlights the higher effectiveness of EPMcreate. Additional data from the experiments are examined for other insights into how and why EPMcreate is effective.

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Notes

  1. A list of papers about applying brainstorming to requirements analysis is given at http://www.economia.unitn.it/etourism/risorseCollegateBrainstorming.asp

  2. Even though the original work was done in 1935, the work was not published formally until 1953.

  3. http://www.pierodegiacomo.it/english/modello.htm

  4. A survey of these techniques is given by Anesi [22], and a list of the related references can be found athttp://www.economia.unitn.it/etourism/risorseCollegateCreativityTechniques.asp

  5. See also http://www.stuart.iit.edu/faculty/barlow/pdfhandouts/cps.pdf

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the various anonymous reviewers for their comments on all versions of this paper. They thank the attendees of REFSQ 2004, particularly Søren Lauesen and Neil Maiden, for their incisive comments following a presentation of that earlier paper. They thank Pier Luigi Novi Inverardi for his advice on statistics. Finally, they thank Björn Regnell, Erik Kamsties, and Vincenzo Gervasi, the editors of this special issue, for their patient discussions of alternative strategies for dealing with the reviewers’ comments. Daniel Berry’s work was supported in part by a Canadian NSERC grant NSERC-RGPIN227055-00.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Telecommunication Technology, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Luisa Mich

  2. Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Cinzia Anesi

  3. School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Daniel M. Berry

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  1. Luisa Mich
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  2. Cinzia Anesi
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  3. Daniel M. Berry
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Correspondence to Luisa Mich.

Additional information

This paper is an extensive revision of a paper by the same authors titled “Requirements engineering and creativity: an innovative approach based on a model of the pragmatics of communication” [1]

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Mich, L., Anesi, C. & Berry, D.M. Applying a pragmatics-based creativity-fostering technique to requirements elicitation. Requirements Eng 10, 262–275 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-005-0008-3

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