View article

[Context] Requirement elicitation can be done by individuals or by groups.[Objectives] From the software engineering and the project management viewpoints, a relevant overall research question is,“Is it possible to give advice about the number of requirements analysts (RAs) to involve in requirements elicitation and idea generation sessions?”[Method] To address this research question, we conducted two studies. The first was a review of software engineering (SE) and requirements engineering (RE) textbooks to see if and how they address this question for requirements elicitation. The second was a study on the factors affecting group size for requirements elicitation in computer-based system (CBS) development projects, based on an online questionnaire submitted to professional business or RAs.[Results] The review of the textbooks showed that very few give advice on the number of RAs to involve in requirements elicitation sessions. When they do, the advice is quite general and is usually not supported by quantitative data that can help project managers decide the number of RAs needed. According to the data gathered from the questionnaire, the ideal number of RAs for a requirements elicitation session appears to be 2. However, there are settings of the size, timing, complexity, and domain of a CBS development project that seem to require different numbers of RAs.