Is/it Requirements Elicitation and Specification Procedure Assessment within a Uk Government Service Organization

Requirements engineering is concerned with the identification of the goals to be achieved by the envisioned IS/IT system. The processes involved include three interrelated functions: requirements elicitation, specification and validation. This study represents an exposition of requirements elicitation/specification concepts and challenges targeting the Government Sector. Groups of Project Managers, Business Analysts and users of IS/IT systems have been surveyed and interviewed and the data on 19 projects is analyzed to ascertain experiences and problems when eliciting and specifying requirements. A 17 factor assessment model is suggested and used for evaluation of the requirements specification documents of the project cases studied. The research concludes that there is considerable doubt within the Government Sector studied as to why it is necessary to produce a requirements specification in the first instance. The design and implementation of an IS/IT system can only be as good as the statement of requirements and a lot more resources and attention need to be channeled to this very important task of requirement specification as part of the project management process.