Economical Requirements Elicitation Techniques During COVID-19: A Systematic Literature Review

Requirements elicitation is a fundamental phase of software development in which an analyst discovers the needs of different stakeholders and transforms them into requirements. This phase is cost- and time-intensive, and a project may fail if there are excessive costs and schedule overruns. COVID-19 has affected the software industry by reducing interactions between developers and customers. Such a lack of interaction is a key reason for the failure of software projects. Projects can also fail when customers do not know precisely what they want. Furthermore, selecting the unsuitable elicitation technique can also cause project failure. The present study, therefore, aimed to identify which requirements elicitation technique is the most cost-effective for large-scale projects when time to market is a critical issue or when the customer is not available. To that end, we conducted a systematic literature review on requirements elicitation techniques. Most primary studies identified introspection as the best technique, followed by survey and brainstorming. This finding suggests that introspection should be the first choice of elicitation technique, especially when the customer is not available or the project has strict time and cost constraints. Moreover, introspection should also be used as the starting point in the elicitation process of a large-scale project, and all known requirements should be elicited using this technique.