SEMANTIC STRUCTURING IN ANALYST ACQUISITION AND REPRESENTATION OF FACTS IN REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS

The determination of information requirements is one of the most cruci al stages in the software design and development process (Montezemi 19 88). It is during this stage that the greatest degree of interaction o ccurs between the analyst and the user (Lauer et al. 1992). Despite th e system development method employed, the functional success of many a spects of requirements determination ultimately rests on how well the user(s) and analyst(s) communicate (Holtzblatt and Beyer 1995). The pu rpose of this paper is to report the results obtain from a laboratory experiment that investigated the effects of a semantic structuring pro cess of inquiry on the process of interview-derived information acquis ition and the subsequent overall correctness of the logical representa tion of the facts obtained. The study focused on the specific question types used by systems analysts and the role their semantic constructi on played in representing the information flows in a business system. Three underlying semantic patterns of questions emerged from the analy sis. The results showed that certain question types were associated wi th increased accuracy of logical representations regardless of analyst experience level. Further, the semantic and process patterns that eme rged were also directly related to accurate representation of facts an d demonstrated an experience-revel independence. The results indicate that disciplined questioning strategies are not necessarily learned fr om practice and they can be improved via structured training. Each of the patterns provide insight into the questioning process employed and the effectiveness of different strategies of inquiry. Implications fo r both the practitioner and the academic research communities with reg ard to analyst interview behavior are discussed.