Nadina Martínez Carod

A Cognitive Psychology Approach for Balancing Elicitation Goals

The difference between success and failure in a project depends on the initial identification and construction of goals, which are the mechanism of identifying software requirements. The result of applying goal-oriented methods, which are top-down requirements analysis, is in most cases a goal graph. Goal graphs are implemented from customers needs as initial goals to requirements specifications as final goals. Their analysis includes negotiation as an important issue, which becomes extremely difficult, as clients often cannot know exactly what they need. To overcome this situation, aiming at improving stakeholders negotiation, we reduce the gap of misunderstanding between them by the use of cognitive science. The objective of this paper is to introduce a cognitive approach to help in the solution of discordances among stakeholders when applying goal- oriented methods. We depict our proposal with a real case study.

Cognitive-driven requirements prioritization: A case study

Prioritizing software requirements includes negotiation among people involved in the process as well as an acceptance of the prioritization criteria. The analysis includes negotiation as an important issue, which becomes extremely difficult, as clients often do not know exactly what they need. To overcome this situation, aiming at improving stakeholders negotiation, we propose reducing the gap of misunderstanding between them by the use of cognitive science. In this paper, we introduce a case study showing that cognitive profiles may affect requirement prioritization. A controlled experiment shows that elicitation techniques should be carefully selected according to cognitive skills to improve prioritization results.

Cognitive Profiles in Understanding and Prioritizing Requirements: A Case Study

Prioritizing requirements includes negotiation as an important issue, which becomes extremely difficult, as clients often do not know exactly what they need. To overcome this situation, aiming at improving stakeholder’s negotiation, we propose reducing the gap of misunderstanding between them by the use of cognitive science. In this paper, we explore relationships among prioritizing requirements, understanding requirements, and individual cognitive profiles. Results from our case study show similarities and differences when visual and non-visual people use visual or non-visual software requirements specifications.