Requirement engineering elicitation methods: A Kuwaiti empirical study about familiarity, usage and perceived value

Few studies have examined how information systems development is practiced in the Arab world. To fill this gap, this study reports on current Requirement Engineering (RE) practices within an Arab country. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of 19 RE techniques in Kuwait in term of three criteria " awareness " , " use " , and " perceived value generated over past system development projects ". Also, this study aims to examine possible relationships between these RE techniques and two information system development success factors. Results show that: (i) Arab culture influence perception of RE techniques; (ii) most companies have good knowledge of different techniques; (iii) several different techniques for identifying and analyzing customer requirements are used; (iv) the most highly valued RE techniques are decision trees, goal oriented, prototyping, DFD, and interviews; (v) Six techniques (tree analysis, role playing, UML, K.J. method, flow charts, and Ishikawa) were found to have the least perceived value; (vi) Only two techniques (prototyping and decision tree) are highly correlated with the statement "Obtaining the right requirements is a critical success factor for system development", while other three techniques (quality function deployment, DFD and role playing) are correlated with " We experienced problems during past system developments projects because of wrong requirements collection ". The Paper discusses these issues which are relevant for research and practice.