Using Protocol Analysis to Explore the Creative Requirements Engineering Process

Protocol analysis is an empirical method applied by researchers in cognitive psychology and behavioural analysis. Protocol analysis can be used to collect, document and analyse thought processes by an individual problem solver. In general, research subjects are asked to think aloud when performing a given task. Their verbal reports are transcribed and represent a sequence of their thoughts and cognitive activities. These verbal reports are analysed to identify relevant segments of cognitive behaviours by the research subjects. The analysis results may be cross-examined (or validated through retrospective interviews with the research subjects). This paper offers a critical analysis of this research method, its approaches to data collection and analysis, strengths and limitations, and discusses its use in information systems research. The aim is to explore the use of protocol analysis in studying the creative requirements engineering process. Creativity in requirements engineering Requirements engineering (RE), an early phase in information systems (IS) development, has been commonly agreed to be one of the most crucial phases in the development process (e.g. Boehm, 1981; Loucopoulos and Karakostas, 1995; Nuseibeh and Easterbrook, 2000). RE is concerned with the elicitation, modelling and specification of user requirements for the new system to be built. Recently, creativity has been increasingly seen as playing an important role in RE (Nguyen et al., 2000; Maiden and Gizikis, 2001; Robertson, 2005; Nguyen and Swatman, 2006; Maiden and Robertson, 2005).