Using Focus Rules in Requirements Elicitation Dialogues

Requirements engineering is a complex task which benefits from computer support. Despite the pro­ gress made in automatic reasoning on require­ ments, the tools supporting requirements elicitation remain difficult to use. In this paper we propose a novel approach where a tool's reasoning is intim­ ately linked to the dialogue it has with its users. Because the dialogue is guided by rules ensuring coherence, the interaction with the tool is more nat­ ural. We discuss in detail the rules we use to or­ ganise the dialogue and how we apply them to the requirements elicitation tool. We present an evalu­ ation of this approach demonstrating improvements in usability during the elicitation process.