A new methodology for requirements elicitation

A survey of the literature has suggested that most of IT system failure in information system development is due to problems of identifying and meeting users' requirements. Conventional systems that support the waterfall approach try to focus on defining information processing requirements rather than looking at IT from a wider perspective. This approach complicates the relationship between the client who 'owns' the problem and the developer who seeks to solve it. Therefore it is common for systems to be created which do not satisfy the needs of their human operators even though they are technically sound. The main aim of the research is to develop a new methodology that can contribute to the effective determination of user requirement. The new methodology has been constructed from unifying ORDIT (Organisational Requirement Definition for Information Technology) and ISAC (Information System Work and Analysis of Change) methodologies. Therefore it can solve a certain set of problems, some which are solved by ORDIT, some which are also solved by ISAC and some which neither of the two methodologies can solve. The activity model used in ISAC is insufficient for solving the organisational issues, therefore it is replaced with the responsibility model which is taken from ORDIT. The responsibility model is used in order to give a clearer understanding of the organisation's structure, aim, objectives and policies. The tables and tools, which are used in the change analysis stage ofISAC, will be used in the new methodology for the purpose of identifying the business problem, user objectives and change needs. These tools and models are used in order to elicit requirements for different problem owner in different levels of the organisation. The new methodology has been applied to a real case study in order to demonstrate and evaluate its performance and usefulness. This case study showed the new methodology to be useful and effective.