A Survey of Practices & Problems associated with incomplete user requirements document

Abstract

Incompleteness is one of the inherent problems of system requirements represented through informal notations (natural language, diagrams, pictures ...etc) and captured in the User Requirement Document (URD). These early requirements need further analysis and refinement to produce a structured document that can then be formally specified. A survey was conducted to investigate the problems encountered and the common practices applied during requirement analysis. The main purpose of the qualitative survey was to use practitioners' responses to develop an approach to the problem of incompleteness within the context of existing literature. This paper presents the main findings of the interviews conducted with eight individuals employed by six different companies in Australia and in the U.S.A. during a six-month period.