Asking the right questions to elicit product requirements

Abstract

Eliciting precise and comprehensive product requirements from customers is of critical importance for the success of product development. In this paper, a generic process is proposed for eliciting product requirements by asking questions based on linguistic analysis. The linguistic analysis transforms a text into a graphic language called recursive object model (ROM). Two types of questions are asked in the process. One type of question, generated according to the topological structure of the ROM diagram, is domain-independent whereas the other relies on the domain of product development. A generic template is developed for generating the questions and for determining the sequence in which those questions are asked. The answers to the questions can be sought on the internet, in text books, the dictionary, the designer's own knowledge and experience, the customers and other partners involved in the product development, and/or nature itself. The generation of new questions may be based on the answers that are obtained. A software prototype is developed to support the proposed process. A case study of a rivet-setting tool design is used to illustrate the process of generating questions.

Keywords:

• requirements elicitation
• question asking
• question generation
• engineering design

Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by NSERC (Grant number RGPIN 298255). The authors thank Lei Chen for developing the ROM analysis system ROMA used in this paper.