Approach and case study of requirement analysis where end users take an active role

In the traditional approach to software analysis, systems analysts interview end users to capture requirements. We propose an approach called Automated User Requirements Acquisition (AURA) where end users take an active role in analysis by identifying requirements. This approach takes advantage of end users' domain knowledge. AURA uses a question-and-answer model to guide end users in describing their problem. Additionally, AURA provides problem domain knowledge to suggest answers for the questions. We choose the business application domain to explain and demonstrate our approach. While the AURA approach can benefit any analysis technique, we select an object-oriented analysis technique as the underlying technique. A prototype tool, AURA-BIZ, was developed to demonstrate AURA in the business domain. We evaluated AURA-BIZ through a case study where end users created the analyses of their business problem. The data collected showed that the end users successfully modeled their problem by following the questions and using the suggestions.