Elicitation of Information Needs in Precontract Requirements Engineering

The precontract phase of a software project is of high importance for the employer as well as the contractor, because this phase yields the basis for a contract between the parties. The main interest of the contractor is to provide an offer which addresses the requirements of the employer in a convincing way and proposes a solution for a reasonable price. In order to decide about the acceptance of an offer, decision makers of the employer require certain information to be contained in the offer. In this paper the results of a survey about the information needs of decision makers are presented. It yields first indications about the relevance of certain information and where in a document decision makers would like to find it. The paper includes a description of the method that has been used to acquire the knowledge.