Impact of Elicitation Techniques on Requirement Validation in Software Industry in Pakistan Samiullah Hunzai, Department of Computer Software Engineering University of Engineering Peshawar Pakistan eng.sami247@gmail.com Ibrar Ali Shah, Department of Computer Software Engineering University of Engineering Peshawar Pakistan ibrar@uetmardan.edu.pk Abstract- In Requirement Engineering (RE), requirements are collected and formalized from all the stakeholders using various elicitation techniques. Afterwards, these requirements are validated at the validation phase before the actual design and development phases can initiate. At the validation stage of RE, requirement specifications are tailored to ensure that the requirements are correct, consistent, complete, and unambiguous. To achieve these objectives, the RE team should select the most suitable elicitation technique during the RE elicitation process. In Pakistan software industry, these techniques include interviews, prototyping, questionnaires, and observations. From literature, it is observed that most of the IT firms do not hire specialized RE teams for requirement gathering; instead, the requirements are collected mostly by the development team. Therefore, the primary motivation of this article is to provide a guideline for IT firms and software industry in Pakistan to select the right type of elicitation techniques for requirement gathering. This article presents the results of a comprehensive survey to evaluate the impact of elicitation techniques on requirement validation process in Pakistan software industry. We distributed a questionnaire to several IT firms across the country, and collected important data corresponding to their procedures of requirement gathering. We focused on the individuals responsible for RE processes, and our main conclusion is that requirements are mostly gathered by developers rather than specialized RE teams. Our results also show that prototyping is the most effective elicitation technique for mobile development, whereas interviews are preferred in case of Web & Desktop applications. Keywords- Requirement Engineering (RE), SDLC, Elicitation Techniques, Requirement Validation, IT Industry in Pakistan I. INTRODUCTION Requirement Engineering (RE) is a fundamentally significant and immensely complicated stage in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). A requirement engineer should have an in-depth knowledge and skill corresponding to all the processes and activities performed during the RE phase [1]. For a software developing process, the most complicated issue is the accurate identification of all the modules and interfaces of the product being build. For this purpose, the role of a requirement engineer is to consult the user in order to gather all the relevant product information to satisfy the customer needs [2][3]. As a f irst step of RE, the customer’s needs and understanding of the problem to resolve are formulated; this step is known as requirement elicitation [4][5]. There are several elicitation techniques utilized for software product development, but applying suitable technique for a particular project is the key to its successful completion. The selection of the most appropriate elicitation technique depends on various factors such as, project budgets, deadlines, type of development, business measures, personal choices, and development tools etc. [6][7]. Based on the right technique, the system analysts can develop a viable strategy to encompass all the aspects of the development which include the interfaces, tools, timelines, goals, and management related issues. Subsequently, a document based on these requirements is generated. The system https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4661442 International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS), Vol. 19, No. 3, March 2021 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4661442 1 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ ISSN 1947-5500