Requirements Engineering and Creativity: An Innovative Approach Based on a Model of the Pragmatics of Communication

This paper proposes the application to requirements elicitation of an innovative creativity technique based on a model of the pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM). The EPM has been used to define a creative process, called EPMcreate that consists of sixteen steps. In each step, the problem is analyzed according to one elementary behavior identified by the EPM. Each behavior suggests that the analyst look at the problem from a different user’s viewpoint. The feasibility and effectiveness of the technique in requirements elicitation was demonstrated by experiments on two projects with very different characteristics. Each experiment compared the performances of two analysis teams, one of which used EPMcreate and the other of which used brainstorming. The results of both experiments confirmed the higher effectiveness of EPMcreate.