Selecting Requirement Elicitation Methods for Designing ICT Application in Minority Community

In recent years, Information and Communication Technologies or widely known as ICT has rapidly acquired a place in society. ICT facilitates communities in terms of providing the latest information updates on various fields such as business, education, sports and many more. Various ICT applications have been developed to cater these arising needs. In ensuring the developed ICT applications achieving its purposes, user requirements must be fulfilled. Thus, gathering requirements from communities during system development is an important phase. A suitable elicitation technique is needed as this will determine the quality and accuracy of the requirements gathered which ensures success of the developed system. The same applies when developing systems for minority communities. Hence, this paper explores the existing requirement elicitation techniques to gain insight for constructing a suitable requirement elicitation technique for minority communities. As a result, a proposed framework for eliciting requirements in the minority community will be discussed

Direct and Mediating Influences of User-Developer Perception Gaps in Requirements Understanding on User Participation

User participation is considered an effective way to conduct requirements engineering, but user-developer perception gaps in requirements understanding occur frequently. Since user participation in practice is not as active as we expect and the requirements perception gap has been recognized as a risk that negatively affects projects, exploring whether user-developer perception gaps in requirements understanding will hinder user participation is worthwhile. This will help develop a greater comprehension of the intertwined relationship between user participation and perception gap, a topic that has not yet been extensively examined. This study investigates the direct and mediating influences of user-developer requirements perception gaps on user participation by integrating requirements uncertainty and top management support. Survey data collected from 140 subjects were examined and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that perception gaps have a direct negative effect on user participation and negate completely the positive effect of top management support on user participation. Additionally, perception gaps do not have a mediating effect between requirements uncertainty and user participation because requirements uncertainty does not significantly and directly affect user participation, but requirements uncertainty indirectly influences user participation due to its significant direct effect on perception gaps. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and limitations and possible future research areas are identified

Designing and assessing a course on prioritization and importance assessment in strategic non-routine requirements engineering processes

In this contribution, we present a course for making stakeholders in requirements engineering (RE) processes aware of the relevance of importance assessment (the thinking process that they go through while assessing requirement weights) and giving them some experience with specific aspects of the importance assessment process. We also analyze the experiences of the participants in five pilot sessions. In RE instruments, elicitation of requirement weights receives much attention. However, the processes that individual stakeholders go through while assessing weights are largely ignored or seen as a ‘black box’. In the course, participants gain experience with some common issues and pitfalls in assessing weights. Issues covered are: completeness and interdependence of requirements, causal relationships and the common denominator, handling ‘irrational’ requirements, and the meaning of ‘importance’ (priority). The course was given in various large organizations in the aerospace sector, and data on participants’ experiences were gathered by means of a standardized questionnaire. The extent to which the participants claimed they learned about the relevance of importance assessment and about how to perform it were, respectively, 2.89 and 2.72 on a scale from 1 to 5. The relevance of the various assignments was rated between 3.74 and 4.00 on a 1–5 scale. Our study indicates that the course, or elements of it, should be embedded in an organization’s work practices in order to achieve lasting effect

Gītakāra: A radio and SMS-based system for collaborative composition and broadcasting

The idea of ICT4D, that technologies can be designed to encourage development of disadvantaged communities, is inherently tied to the contentious definition of“development.” Following Escobar (1995), this thesis aims to repurpose the idea of development to recognize, encourage and support local subjectivities, goals and practices among rural Indian youth who cannot attend school regularly and are thus isolated from peers. To provide opportunities for these youth to engage with peers intellectually and creatively from a distance, this thesis describes a system that uses the local technologies of community radio stations and SMS messaging to enable youth to collaboratively author song lyrics. The project’s design process was guided by the methodology of appropriate technology, and several user tests and questionnaires were conducted to evaluate the system. Overall, study participants expressed that Gītakāra is a platform where they can have fun and creatively collaborate, think and compose with their peers

How Do Business People Rank Requirements Representations for Information Systems?

The research question that summarises the primary research goals is: How do business people rank their intentions to use different requirements representations for information systems? An additional goal of the research is to understand the determinants that contribute to these intentions. Business people in this research are defined as working people who are not in an information systems role. The requirements representations evaluated were Prose Narrative, Image Narrative, Diagram Narrative and Video Narrative. The results of this research show that business people rank their intention to use the requirements representations in the following order: Prose Narrative, Image Narrative, Diagram Narrative and Video Narrative. The determinants that influence the intention to use a representation are: Job Performance, Effort, Attitude to a Representation, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions, Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, Freedom of Choice, Experience, Age and Gender. This research shows that the influence of each of these determinants on the intention to use a representation is significantly different for each requirements representation

A conceptual model of an access-technology-agnostic delivery mechanism for ICT4D services

Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) is an emerging research area that is concerned with the beneficial applications of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to achieve developmental goals. ICT4D is thus concerned with designing and developing innovative technologies for resource-constrained environments for applications in key areas of social development such as health, agriculture and education. The ICT4D initiatives, therefore, are driving three main tasks, namely developing the required infrastructure (connectivity, electricity and computing devices) sustainably, building the required ICT human capacity, and providing access to digital content and services. Each of these three main thrusts necessitates innovation. This study addresses the evident lack of delivery mechanisms to facilitate access to digital content and services to end-users through the technologies that these end-users already possess. This lack of innovative delivery mechanisms is both an impediment to achieving equitable access to digital content and service and an opportunity to innovate. Therefore, drawing from the theoretical background of ICT4D, this study develops a set of technical and socio-technical requirements that the missing delivery mechanisms should satisfy. The study also explores the Service Delivery Platform (SDP) concept as a technically viable basis for the required delivery mechanisms. The study then develops a conceptual model of an Access-Technology-Agnostic Delivery Mechanism as a possible delivery mechanism that facilitates equitable access to digital content and services within an ICT4D context. The relevance of the conceptual model is established and, through a prototype implementation, the technical feasibility and utility of the conceptual model is demonstrated. The conceptual model is demonstrated through a proof of concept implementation using standards-based open source technologies. The proof of concept clearly demonstrates that the access-technology-agnostic delivery of digital content and services is achievable, thus making the same service accessible through different access technologies. In developing the Access-Technology-Agnostic Delivery Mechanism, this study contributes through innovation to providing access to digital content and services in an access-technology-agnostic manner