Elicitation and Gathering of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 40

3. Web based surveys—This is the latest method being used by software product
developers. The main advantage of this method is that collation of information
from the survey is automatic and immediate. In both the above methods,
namely, face-to-face and postal surveys, the results need to be entered into a
database to enable analysis. In this case, the results are automatically and
immediately stored into the database and the turnaround time is drastically
reduced. Some precautions are necessary to limit the participants to a geo-
graphic region. Otherwise, we may receive responses from all over the world.
In the case of face-to-face and postal surveys, the participants are automatically
limited to the selected set or respondents. But in web based surveys, we need to
devise mechanisms to limit the participants. Often, web based surveys are
coupled with email invitations to participate in the survey so as to limit the
participants. In addition to the cost of developing the questionnaire, the cost of
the software necessary to conduct the survey would be involved. Alternately,
we may use specialized providers of web based surveys, who, fortunately, are
available and provide the service at an affordable cost. This technique also uses
questionnaires detailed in Sect. 3.2.3 .
3.2.3 Questionnaires
Questionnaires are one of the very popular methods of eliciting requirements.
These are used mostly in the software product development scenario. The product
management team or whoever is looking after the development of requirements for
the proposed product designs a suitable questionnaire. Normally, most of the
product development scenarios are based on an existing product. Therefore, the
questionnaires enumerate all the existing features of the product as well as new
ones and the respondent is requested to:
1. Set the order of importance of the features
2. The features that are most essential
3. The features that are not essential
4. The features that may motivate the respondent to either buy or switch to the
new product
5. Any other additional features the respondent would like to see in the new
product.
Sometimes, an incentive to respond is provided to obtain maximum response
for the questionnaire. Normally the incentive would be a draw of lots for a prize or
a free report or something like that.
In a project development scenario, when requirements are elicited by personal
interviews detailed in Sect. 3.2.1 above, questionnaires could be used to aid the
interviewer to obtain full information from the interviewee. Here, the question-
naire is not administered as in an examination with the respondent filling in the