Common Mistakes of Student Analysts in Requirements Elicitation Interviews

Customer-analyst interviews are among the most common techniques for eliciting requirements. How- ever, students of computer science-related disciplines have little material and time for learning how to perform an effective interview. As a re- sult, once out of the class, the effectiveness of analysts in interviewing highly depends on their experience. [Question/problem] Since learning from failures is recognised as an wise strategy for professional improve- ment, this work aims at identifying communication mistakes of student requirements analysts. [Principal idea/results] We conducted a case study involving 36 students to which we gave a typical introduction to requirements elicitation interviews. Then, we arranged and recorded 18 elicitation interviews involving the students. The interview recordings were analysed by interview experts. The experts produced a list of 9 main communication mistakes, which we report in this paper. [Contri- bution] This is the first work that provides a concise list of mistakes of students analysts, with corrective recommendations and examples. It can be useful for teachers of software engineering courses, as well as for prac- titioners, who may commit the same mistakes of the students without being aware of their errors.