Elicitation and Gathering of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 39

3.2.2 Customer/Market Surveys
This is perhaps the most extensively used technique to capture the requirements for
a product and is used widely in the software product development scenario. Sur-
veys generally collect information from a wide audience. The objective of a survey
can be to obtain information, or prove/disprove a hypothesis, to learn the social
trend, to learn how a particular product is being used and so on. The survey used in
requirements management is to obtain information from the targeted users of the
proposed product. The information thus obtained shall be analyzed to develop the
requirements for the proposed product. Surveys elicit opinions from both the
existing customers and the people forming part of the target market. Normally the
following categories of persons would be approached to provide the information:
1. CIOs (Chief Information Officers) or whoever is looking after the computer
departments of the organization, in case the proposed product is focused on
assisting the information departments in efficiently managing the IS (Infor-
mation Systems) functioning.
2. The general public, if the proposed product is targeted at the public at large.
3. Existing customers, if an existing product is proposed to be upgraded with new
functionality.
4. VARs (Value Added Resellers) both for developing a new product or upgrading
an existing product. For a new product, the VARs would provide valuable
information based on their experience with the other products in the market.
5. Internal product technical support staff for improvements to solve the problems
they faced in the field.
6. Consultants of specialized fields to provide information about the product
requirements in their specialty.
Normally surveys are conducted in three ways:
1. Face-to-face method—in this method, an individual representing the organi-
zation would approach the members of the selected audience and personally
interview the person to obtain necessary information. This would be used,
sparingly as it is very costly compared to the postal survey. When it is expected
that the responses to a questionnaire would not be satisfactory and supple-
mental questions are needed to elicit complete information, this technique
would be used. The flip side of this technique is its high cost as higher cost
individuals are needed to interview and obtain the information. Another dis-
advantage is that the number of responses would be far less compared to postal
surveys. It is still used for a few cases to check the efficacy of the findings of a
postal survey. This technique uses the methodology described in Sect. 3.2.1 .
2. Postal method—in this method, questionnaires are mailed/emailed to the target
participants and responses are collected. When mailers are used, it is customary
to provide addressed and stamped envelopes to mail back the responses so that
the respondent is not required to spend money for mailing back the response.
Questionnaires are detailed in Sect. 3.2.3 .