Abstract
The present master's work is related to the area of Software Requirements, focusing
on the Requirements Elicitation phase. Requirements elicitation is the origin
of software requirements and how software engineers collect information to understand
the problem that software will solve. The fluid communication between the
diferent stakeholders of a software system is one of the basic principles of a good
requirements elicitation process. For that reason, the human activity is fundamental.
Software engineers use elicitation techniques as interviews to obtain information
from stakeholders. Completing the interview technique with mechanisms that help
the analyst improves the efectiveness of information acquisition.
The objective of this master thesis is to study if neuro-linguistic programming
improves the amount of information an analyst can acquire from stakeholders during
the requirements elicitation process.
The Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) is an approach on personal development
and communication.
We performed an exploratory study with a total of 14 experimental subjects.
They were students enrolled in a Master level course related to Computer Science or
Software Engineering. Other subjects are professionals who belong, or not, to the
area of computer science.
Subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental groups. G1 for those who
applied NLP and G2 for those who did not. G1 group had to execute an NLP
exercise, the Alphabet Game, before initiating the elicitation session.
The experimental session consisted in carrying out an elicitation session on a
problem domain. The session consisted of: listening and understanding an audio.
Subjects then had to make a written report and finally make a recall/recognition
assessment.
We concluded that: Neuro-linguistic programming has an effect positive in the
amount of Recall Information (i.e., information that an analyst would be able to
specify in details) during an elicitation session.
On the other hand, neuro-linguistic programming seems do not have an effect in
the amount of Recognition Information (i.e., information that an analyst would be
able to understand its meaning but not remember with details) during an elicitation
session.
Neuro-linguistic programming exercises improves the analyst's cognitive abilities.
