Approach to attributed feature modeling for requirements elicitation in Scrum agile development

• Published in: Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology Vol. 101; no. 9; pp. 3338 - 3350
• Main Authors: Ignaim, Karam, Al Khatib, Sultan M., Alkharabsheh, Khalid, Fernandes, João M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Little Lion Scientific 15.05.2023
• Subjects: Agile Methodology; Attributed Feature Models; Eletrónica e Informática; Engenharia e Tecnologia; Engenharia Eletrotécnica; Indústria; inovação e infraestruturas; Requirement Engineering; Requirements Elicitation; Scrum; Story Cards
• ISSN: 1817-3195

Requirements elicitation is a core activity of requirements engineering for the product to be developed. The knowledge that has been gained during requirements engineering about the product to be developed forms the basis for requirement elicitation. The agile approach is becoming known day by day as the most widely used innovative process in the domain of requirements engineering. Requirements elicitation in agile development faces several challenges. Requirements must be gathered sufficiently to reflect stakeholders' needs. Furthermore, because of the development process, requirements evolve, and they must be adequately treated to keep up with the changing demands of the market and the passage of time. Another challenge with agile implementation is handling non-functional requirements in software development. Addressing non- functional requirements is still a critical factor in the success of any product. Requirements prioritization is also one of the most challenging tasks, and it is uncommon for requirement engineers to be able to specify and document all the requirements at once. This paper presents an approach for requirements elicitation in scrum-based agile development. The approach operates with the feature modeling technique, which is originally used in the Software Product Line (SPL). One of the most important proposed extensions to Feature Models (FMs) is the introduction of feature attributes. Our method uses attributed FMs to consider both functional and non-functional requirements as well as requirement prioritization. For the evaluation purposes, we have demonstrated our approach through two case studies in different domains of software product development. The first case study is in the domain of education, and the second one is in the domain of health care. The results reveal that our approach fits the requirements elicitation process in scrum agile development.