Anticipating requirements changes-using futurology in requirements elicitation

Abstract

It is well known that requirements changes in a later phase of software developments is a major source of software defects and costs. Thus, the need of techniques to control or reduce the amount of changes during software development projects. The authors advocate the use of foresight methods as a valuable input to requirements elicitation, with the potential to decrease the number of changes that would be required after deployment, by anticipating them. In this paper, the authors define a process for using a foresight method, namely Futures Wheel, for requirements elicitation. To illustrate the use of this approach, the authors perform a case study using a route planning system.