Lecture # 18 Problems in Each Dimension

Objective -Understand problem in each dimension Introduction While gathering information from various dimensions, a number of problems are faced. Following section enlists the problems under relevant headings Problems in Application Domain • Knowledge is scattered in books, brains and manuals • Problems are also faced while referring to these sources because the presence and usage of specialist terminologies. For example, while making a system for managing financial products a developer may encounter terms like Premium, On Risk Date, Income Protection etc. In order to better understand documents etc. such terms may first be understood. Problems in Problem Analysis People who understand the problem are sometimes so busy or they have some deadlines to meet because of which they have less priority for sharing information with requirement engineer In some situations, they may not be convinced that the system is necessary/useful, therefore they resist its development by avoiding sharing information or in some cases correct information Problems in Business Understanding: • Higher management may try to present requirements in such a way that they gain more control. They initially decided and main objectives may be different but higher management may latter realize that there is an opportunity of getting other advantages from the system. Thus they will try to include additional requirements that may to contribute in achieving the actual objectives of the system. Problems in Understanding Stakeholder Constraints and Needs: • It is a common observation that stakeholders don’t really know what they want or in some cases they find it difficult to articulate their needs and wants. • It has also been observed that they have unrealistic demands because they are not aware of the technology constraints. For example the client may demand a mobile application that allows users dictate SMS. This application is technically impossible with the current technology. • One other issue is that same requirement is expressed differently by various stakeholders belonging to various levels of organization. Other problems • Economic and business environment changes, this may affect the importance certain requirements or even certain applications. To understand this, let’s discuss an example out of the IT domain. A recording company decided that it would make cassettes by itself and it started working on this project. While they were in the initial stages of this project, CDs came into the market and soon it became clear that CDs will replace cassettes. The business will now lose its interest in the project related to cassettes as it will not be worth spending money on it. • Requirements from new stakeholders who were not originally consulted • People who were consulted initially changed their jobs • Stakeholders forget what they said. For example, one of our clients indicated that some fields must have defaulted to commonly used values so that users don’t have to type everything. However at a later stage of project they complained (forgetting that it was their own demand) that because of the default values end-users do not fill the complete form and they leave the default values as they are.