Data-driven creativity in Requirements Engineering; Devising a data-driven approach for increasing creativity in requirements engineering

Abstract

This research explores the possibility, usefulness and effectiveness of data-driven methods and techniques in supporting the creative process of requirements elicitation in projects with a highly adaptive and changing environment allowing little time for RE activities, such as agile software development. First, the concept of requirements elicitation is explored, as well as the various techniques used during elicitation. Afterwards a lightweight and accessible technique, called Feature.Ly is developed to aid users during idea generation. The application provides examples based on features extracted from app reviews retrieved from the App Store to trigger users into generating new ideas or adapt the examples to their situation. Evaluation of the application resulted in no significant effect when comparing idea generation without and with the application. However, a number of insights are gathered to guide future work and areas of research.