How Stakeholders' Commitment May Affect the Success of Requirements Elicitation

Requirements elicitation consists in collecting information about the requirements and the environment of a systemto-be. It usually involves business analysts who are eliciting information, and stakeholders who are providing information. This paper investigates how the commitment of stakeholders to a RE project influences the results of elicitation. We suggest a way to measure the commitment of stakeholders during RE, and propose the so-called “commitment matrix”, which shows what analysts can expect from stakeholders who are more, as opposed to those who are less committed. The matrix builds on a survey of 87 stakeholders. Our results suggest that commitment somehow affects the information provided by stakeholders, and that it is therefore a relevant criterion to account for when selecting stakeholders to be involved in elicitation. Keywords—Requirements Elicitation, Commitment, Involvement