Vol 2 Issue 8

1. International Journal of Research in Advent Technology, Vol.2, No.8, August 2014
E-ISSN: 2321-9637
An Integrated Model for Gathering Requirements in an
51
Organization Involving Multiple Sites
Apoorva Mishra
Assistant professor, Computer Science & Engineering, C.S.I.T, CSVTU, India
apoorvamish1989@gmail.com
Abstract- The requirements’ gathering is an initial and very important stage of software development. It is a
stage in system development that is highly vulnerable to errors and even a small mistake during this phase can
have serious implications. It involves various activities like: feasibility study, elicitation analysis, validation and
management of requirements etc-. The different methods have their own advantages and disadvantages and are
suitable for different types of projects. In case of organizations involving more than one site, the process
becomes even more complicated. In this paper various issues have been identified, which may create problem
while gathering requirements from multiple sites of an organization and a model for effectively gathering the
requirements has been proposed.
Index Terms- Requirements elicitation; requirements validation; multi-site organization
1. INTRODUCTION
Understanding the needs of the users and how the
proposed system should behave can greatly increase
the likelihood of successful projects. The
requirements phase of a development project is
characterized by intense communication activities and
involves a diverse range of people who differ on
levels of background, skill, knowledge and status. The
different people involved in the requirements
gathering phase are customer/client representatives,
users, representatives of the software organization,
technical team members etc-.There are several
techniques for gathering requirements; each has its
own advantages and disadvantages. Some of the
famous techniques are: interviews, workshops,
Questionnaires, joint application development (JAD),
brainstorming, prototyping etc-. When requirements
have to be gathered from different units of an
organization, then, the task of requirements gathering
becomes more difficult because of the contradiction
or ambiguity that may occur due to the requirements
gathered from different units/sites.
2.DESCRIPTION OF VARIOUS
TECHNIQUES FOR GATHERING
REQUIREMENTS
2.1 Prototyping:
Prototyping is useful for constructing a quick and
rough version of the desired system. The prototype
demonstrates the functionality of the system to the
users. It serves as a medium of communication
between the customer and the developers.
Prototyping quickly converts requirements to working
form of system. The main advantage of prototyping is
that users get a chance to view the system and give
feedback at an earlier stage. Some of the
disadvantages of the prototyping technique are as
follows:
Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) checks
are often bypassed.
Less documentation
Sharing data with other systems is often not
considered .
2.2 Requirements Workshops:
Requirements Workshops are a powerful technique
for eliciting requirements because they can be
designed to encourage consensus concerning the
requirements of a particular capability. The
advantages are: participant commitment to the work
products and project success, teamwork, resolution of
political issues, and reaching consensus on a host of
topics. Benefits of requirements workshops include
the following:
Workshops help to streamline the requirements
capture and analysis process.
Workshops are dynamic in nature.
Workshops involve a lot of interaction and hence
provide a better opportunity to understand the
customers’ requirements in a better way as they
provide opportunity for clearing doubts.
The user involvement is more.
They help to identify and prioritize needs and
resolve ambiguous issues.
Workshop costs are often lower than
are those for many interviews.
2.3 Brainstorming:
Brainstorming is a powerful technique because the
most creative or effective ideas often result from

2. International Journal of Research in Advent Technology, Vol.2, No.8, August 2014
E-ISSN: 2321-9637
52
combining seemingly unrelated ideas. Brainstorming
involves both idea generation and reduction. The aim
of idea generation is to identify as many ideas as
possible, while the idea reduction ranks the ideas
according to their usefulness. This technique
encourages original thinking and unusual ideas. The
disadvantage of brainstorming is that it involves the
possibility that the powerful people in the
organization might dominate the others by misusing
the power of their designations.
2.4 Interviews:
Interviews are one of the most commonly used ways
of gathering requirements from the clients. An
interview might be structured or unstructured. The
disadvantage of an interview is that: the bias of the
person being interviewed may influence the
information obtained. The interviewer must ask the
questions in such a manner that the interviewee must
not get the opportunity to give indirect answers.
Interviews are useful in the following situations:
To collect preliminary information before
designing a survey.
To collect detailed information about
participants’ experiences and impressions about a
program.
To obtain feedback from the stakeholders.
When explanation and follow-up to answers
given on surveys are desired.
Advantages:
The interviewer may obtain rich details.
The interviewee is able to raise the issues which
he or she feels are important.
Disadvantages:
Interviews may present challenges with privacy.
Interviews are quite expensive and time-consuming
to conduct.
3. ISSUES IN MULTI SITE
REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
The different issues that are encountered while
gathering requirements from multiple sites of an
organization are:
Inadequate communication
Knowledge management
Cultural diversity
Time difference
Contradiction in requirements gathered from
different sites
Ambiguity due to requirements being
gathered from different sites.
Customers unsure about their needs.
Human bias
Inconsistency among requirements that are
being gathered from different sites.
Difficulty in prioritizing the requirements as
different units claim the requirements related
to their unit to of higher importance.
Incomplete requirements
Impractical requirements
Invalid requirements
4. MODEL FOR GATHERING
REQUIREMENTS IN AN ORGANIZATION
INVOLVING MULTIPLE SITES
As requirements gathering plays a vital role in the
development of the software; it is necessary to have a
standard framework for gathering requirements. Many
methods of gathering requirements have been
proposed, which have their own advantages and
disadvantages and are useful under certain scenarios.
But the process of gathering requirements becomes
much more complicated when the requirements have
to be gathered from the different sites of an
organization because of the reasons mentioned above.
In order to deal with the situation of gathering
requirements from an organization involving multiple
sites, the following model is proposed as described by
fig. 4.1. The model involves step by step collection of
the requirements from different sites and then
checking for any contradiction, ambiguity or
inconsistency introduced due to the involvement of
different sites.

3. International Journal of Research in Advent Technology, Vol.2, No.8, August 2014
E-ISSN: 2321-9637
As it is clear from the figure that the process of
requirements gathering in multi-site organizations is
iterative in nature and after every phase it is verified
that there should not be any contradiction or
ambiguity; after ensuring that there is no contradiction
or ambiguity present, it is checked that the
requirements should be pragmatic in nature. If any of
these is not true than the requirements are again
discussed with the customer for reconsideration.
Once all these things are clarified for a module from
different sites; the requirements for next module from
every site is collected. This process continues till the
requirements from all the sites and for all the modules
have been collected. Let us consider the example of a
multi site company ‘A’ consisting of three sites: ‘M’,
‘N’ ‘O’. Using this model, first requirements are
gathered from the sites ‘M’, ‘N’ ‘O’ for module1.
Then any kind of contradiction, ambiguity or
inconsistency is checked. If found; then, request for
reconsidering requirements is made. Else the practical
aspect of the requirement is checked and if it is found
that, it is practically possible to implement the
requirement, then, the requirement for the next
module is collected from the different sites and this
procedure is repeated until all the requirements have
been gathered. In this way the proposed model rules
out the possibility of having any conflict in terms of
the requirements gathered from the different sites.
5. CONCLUSION
Requirement gathering is one of the most crucial
aspects of software development and is always prone
to errors. There are several techniques for gathering
requirements from the customers and each of them is
useful in different scenarios. The problem of
requirements gathering intensifies when the
requirement has to be gathered from different sites of
an organization because of various issues as discussed
above. A model for gathering requirements effectively
in an organization involving multiple sites has been
proposed, which rules out the possibility of any
contradiction among requirements gathered from
different sites and the ambiguity caused by the
requirements that are being gathered from the
different sites of an organization. Hence it can be
concluded that the model is very useful for gathering
requirements in an effective manner from an
organization consisting of several sites.
REFERENCES
[1] Roger S. Pressman, “Software Engineering: A
Practitioner's Approach”, 2010, McGraw- Hill
Higher Education, 7 th Edition pp 200-240.
[2] Hofmann, Hubert F., and Franz, Lehner.
“Requirements Engineering as a Success Factor in
Software Projects.” IEEE Software July/Aug.
2001: 58-66.
53
Gather
requirement
for one
module
from site 1
start
Site
1,2 ,3…n
Gather
requirement
for one
module
from site n
Combine
requirements
gathered from
different sites.
Check for
contradiction,
ambiguity or
inconsistency
Check if
requirements
are pragmatic
in nature ?
Is
requirement
complete ?
Contact customer
request to
reconsider
requirements
Contact customer
request to
reconsider
requirements
Yes
No
Ok
Problem
No
Stop
Yes
Fig 4.1 Model for Gathering Requirements
from an Organization Involving Multiple Sites

4. International Journal of Research in Advent Technology, Vol.2, No.8, August 2014
E-ISSN: 2321-9637
54
[3] Hooks, Ivy F., and Kristin A. Farry. Customer-
Cen tered Products: Creating Successful Products
Through Smart Requirements Management. New
York: AMACOM (publishing arm of The
American Management Association), 2001.
[4] Requirements Gathering, elicitation techniques,
West university, Sai Ganesh Gunda, 2008.
[5] Lecture on “Requirements Gathering” by
Professor Yong Tan.
[6] Dr. Ralph R. Young, “Recommended
Requirements Gathering Practices”, Northrop
Grumman Information Technology
[7] Markus K. Gröner, “Capturing Requirements
Meeting Customer Intent: A Structured
Methodological Approach”, May, 2002,
Blacksburg, Virginia.
[8] Ilari Pulkkinen, “Unifying the Process for
Requirements Gathering in Multi-site
Organizations: A Case Study with Interface
Development Tools”, School of Science, Espoo,
2011.