A Zachman’s Architecture-based Framework for Classification and Allocation of Software Requirement Elicitation Interview Questions

Abstract

Elicitation of precise software requirements is a complex task involving multiple stakeholders with disparate concerns and viewpoints about the intended software. The need to build frameworks with tool supports to aid communications among these stakeholders has come to the fore in recent times. This paper presents a requirements elicitation framework that leverages the principles of the Zachman’s Enterprise Architecture to classify requirements elicitation interview questions into categories that address different aspects of a software system and allocate the categories to suitable (groups of) stakeholders. The proposed framework uses a two-dimensional matrix to allocate questions to stakeholders based on the domain abstraction covered by the question and the stakeholder’s perspective of the domain. This paper presents a formal specification of the framework, its supporting algorithms and a prototype implementation which is used as a proof of concept to classify and allocate the elicitation questions for a local software development project