Developing Measurable Cross-Departmental Learning Objectives for Requirements Elicitation in an Information Systems Curriculum

The ability to elicit information systems requirements is a necessary learning objective for students in a contemporary information systems curriculum, and is a skill vital to their careers. Common challenges in teaching this skill include both the lack of structure and guidance in information systems textbooks as well as the view that a student’s education consists of a disparate set of unrelated courses. These challenges are exacerbated by faculty who focus only on their taught courses and by textbooks that often promote an isolated, passing glance at both the importance of and the idea behind requirements elicitation. In this paper, we describe a multi-year, faculty-led effort to create and refine learning activities that are aligned to requirements elicitation learning objectives both within and scaffolded across courses in a modern information systems curriculum. To achieve success in developing this marketable skill within information systems students, learning activities were integrated across the entire information systems major in a process we call Bloomification, where learning objectives, aligned learning activities, and courses are related and connected across the curriculum. This cross-departmental process is presented and lessons learned by the faculty are discussed

A Rubric to Evaluate and Enhance Requirements Elicitation Interviewing Skills

Eliciting effective requirements is vital for successful Information Systems development and implementation. Interviews with stakeholders and users are an important part of the requirements elicitation process. Thus, teaching students how to better perform requirements elicitation interviews is a critical task for information systems faculty. However, prior to this research, a common tool or rubric to evaluate the effectiveness of requirements elicitation interviews was not found in the literature. The purpose of this research was to develop a rubric that can be used to both evaluate (provide summative measures) and enhance (via formative training techniques) the requirements elicitation interviewing skills of information systems students. The results of this research provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence that the rubric developed and described in this paper substantially improved the ability of our students to conduct requirements elicitation interviews. Along with detailing the various methodologies we used, this paper provides practical pedagogical suggestions and lessons learned along with covering possible future avenues of research in this area

Communication, culture, competency, and stakeholder that contribute to requirement elicitation effectiveness

In the context of software development, requirement engineering is one of the crucial phases that leads to software project success or failure. According to several disruptive changes in the software engineering landscape as well as the world’s challenge of virus pandemic, the provision of practical and innovative software applications is required. Therefore, issues resolution in requirement elicitation is potentially one of the key success factors resulting in enhanced quality of system requirement. The authors have striven to create new ways of requirement elicitation according to factor effects of communication, culture, competency, and stakeholder, by incorporating tools, processes, methods, and techniques to solve the problems comprehensively, and then proposed an adaptive and applicable conceptual framework. To illustrate these effects, the authors performed a literature review from the past 8 years, and then data analysis from interviews of 27 practitioners, observations and focus groups of software development in real-life projects

An evaluation of the RAPID assessment-based process improvement method for small firms

[Abstract]: With increasing interest by the software development community in software process improvement (SPI), it is vital that SPI programs are evaluated and the reports of lessons learned disseminated. This paper presents an evaluation of a program in which low-rigour, one-day SPI assessments were offered at no cost to 22 small Australian software development firms. The assessment model was based on ISO/IEC 15504 (SPICE). About twelve months after the assessment, the firms were contacted to arrange a follow-up meeting to determine the extent to which they had implemented the recommendations from the assessment. Comparison of the process capability levels at the time of assessment and the follow-up meetings revealed that the process improvement program was effective in improving the process capability of many of these small software development firms. Analysis of the assessment and follow-up reports explored important issues relating to SPI: elapsed time from assessment to follow-up meeting, the need for mentoring, the readiness of firms for SPI, the role of the owner/manager, the advice provided by the assessors, and the need to record costs and benefits. Based on a meta-analysis of the program and its outcomes, advice and recommendations are provided to small firms and assessors. As well as providing validation of the assessment model and method, the outcomes from this research have the potential to better equip practitioners and consultants to undertake software process improvement, hence increasing the success of small software development firms in domestic and global markets

Cancer Care Coordinators: Realising the Potential for Improving the Patient Journey

A person diagnosed with cancer can receive multiple treatments in a variety of different health care settings over extended periods of time1. During this time, they come into contact with multiple health care providers. For example, one recent UK study reported that cancer patients with a diagnosis of less than one year had met 28 doctors on average since their diagnosis2. Add to this the many other health professionals with whom the patient will come into contact during their illness and the complex maze that can characterise the patient’s cancer journey is obvious. The Optimising Cancer Care in Australia report3 published in 2003 by the peak cancer organisations in Australia concluded that there are many places for the person with cancer to get lost in the system, causing unnecessary morbidity and undue distress. The lack of an integrated care system for people with cancer was identified as a major failing of today’s health system3. A number of states in Australia have moved to appoint cancer care coordinators as a strategy to address such problems. In Queensland, cancer coordination positions have been established in a number of Health Service Districts in the Southern and Central Zone of the State, initially to scope patterns of care, referral pathways and to define a cancer coordination model for their regions that is consistent across the state, but able to meet the local needs of the population. To support its Cancer Clinical Service Framework, the NSW Health Department plans to recruit up to 50 cancer nurse coordinators. Cancer nurse coordinators in NSW will work through Lead Clinicians and Directors of Area Cancer Services to support oncology team meetings, develop care pathways and protocols, and provide a direct source of contact for patients and primary care physicians accessing cancer services4. In Victoria, a number of program coordinators and regional nurse coordinators have been introduced as part of the breast services enhancement program. Individual institutions have also established nurse coordinator roles for specific tumour streams. The cancer care coordinator role is a rapidly emerging one with a mandate to achieve some potentially far-reaching reforms to systems of care. To ensure these developments realise their potential, it is timely to consider the most effective ways to design and implement models of care coordination thatachieve the improvements being sought for the Australian cancer care system

Learning from mistakes: An empirical study of elicitation interviews performed by novices

© 2018 IEEE. [Context] Interviews are the most widely used elicitation technique in requirements engineering. However, conducting effective requirements elicitation interviews is challenging, due to the combination of technical and soft skills that requirements analysts often acquire after a long period of professional practice. Empirical evidence about training the novices on conducting effective requirements elicitation interviews is scarce. [Objectives] We present a list of most common mistakes that novices make in requirements elicitation interviews. The objective is to assist the educators in teaching interviewing skills to student analysts. [Re-search Method] We conducted an empirical study involving role-playing and authentic assessment with 110 students, teamed up in 28 groups, to conduct interviews with a customer. One re-searcher made observation notes during the interview while two researchers reviewed the recordings. We qualitatively analyzed the data to identify the themes and classify the mistakes. [Results and conclusion] We identified 34 unique mistakes classified into 7 high level themes. We also give examples of the mistakes made by the novices in each theme, to assist the educationists and trainers. Our research design is a novel combination of well-known pedagogical approaches described in sufficient details to make it re-peatable for future requirements engineering education and training research

Picture the Music: Performing Arts Library Planning with Photo Elicitation

Photo elicitation, a form of ethnographic journaling, provided insights into university music and dance student needs in library and campus spaces and services. In this case study, subjects took a photo for each of twenty prompts related to their daily lives as students and performing artists, then discussed their own photos in a one-hour individual interview. Researchers qualitatively analyzed the gathered data. This article reports findings related to: discovering and obtaining music and dance works, study spaces and sound levels, forces of habit and the implications for student library use, and library-related findings regarding practice rooms and classrooms

INSPIRED INTERVIEWING: LEVERAGING MINDFULNESS PRACTICE TO IMPROVE SECRET SERVICE INTERVIEW SKILLS IN PROTECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATIONS

The Secret Service conducts Protective Intelligence (PI) investigations as part of its integrated mission of investigating financial crimes and protecting certain elected federal government officials. An integral part of the PI investigation is the PI interview. Although Special Agents and Uniformed Division Officers receive PI interview training, they still struggle with four key components of the interview: rapport and relationship building, elicitation, deception detection, and decision-making. As a result, they may not conduct thorough PI interviews, thus negatively impacting the PI investigation. Faulty PI investigations may result in unwanted outcomes for Secret Service protective interests. These outcomes may include death or injury to protectees, Secret Service employees, or the public. A potential solution is the mPEAK mindfulness program that the Secret Service already uses to improve employee wellness. This thesis reviews literature on mindfulness training and its utility in performance enhancement to determine to what extent the Secret Service should leverage mPEAK to improve PI interviewing and to offer recommendations for the inclusion of mPEAK in the current PI training curriculum. It finds that elements of mindfulness—presence, nonjudgment, enhanced listening skills, and increased attention—can improve investigators’ PI interview skills. Finally, this thesis gives recommendations for a working group to adapt mPEAK for improved PI interviewing.Civilian, Department of Homeland SecurityApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited