A Rubric to Evaluate and Enhance Requirements Elicitation Interviewing Skills

Eliciting effective requirements is vital for successful Information Systems development and implementation. Interviews with stakeholders and users are an important part of the requirements elicitation process. Thus, teaching students how to better perform requirements elicitation interviews is a critical task for information systems faculty. However, prior to this research, a common tool or rubric to evaluate the effectiveness of requirements elicitation interviews was not found in the literature. The purpose of this research was to develop a rubric that can be used to both evaluate (provide summative measures) and enhance (via formative training techniques) the requirements elicitation interviewing skills of information systems students. The results of this research provide both quantitative and qualitative evidence that the rubric developed and described in this paper substantially improved the ability of our students to conduct requirements elicitation interviews. Along with detailing the various methodologies we used, this paper provides practical pedagogical suggestions and lessons learned along with covering possible future avenues of research in this area.