Estudos qualitativos para elicitaÃÃo de requisitos: uma abordagem que integra anÃlise sÃcio-cultural e modelagem organizacional

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

It is known that to adequately obtain software requirements it is necessary to understand the human activities of the social and organizational contexts where the future systems will be used. Traditional ethnomethodological approaches of qualitative social studies provide a detailed description of human activities. However, the rethorical aspect these approaches emphasize makes the integration with software design difficult. On the other hand, the argumentation against design oriented methods is the loss of sensibility to empirical field analysis, since they are directed by frameworks and cognitive models of design. Activity Theory is a post-cognitivist theoretical framework considered as a starting point solution which could promote a better balance between these two poles. However, the current approaches that try to put this socio-cultural analytical tool in practice still offer difficulties of integration with Software Engineering. In the Requirement Engineering area, the i* (i star) technique of organizational modeling incorporates intentional aspects and strategic dependency relations to the process oriented constructors of traditional cognitive modeling methods. However, methodologies based on this technique usually do not treat the problem of how to generate âvalidâ models from the empirical data analysis process. Grounded Theory is a method of qualitative research which emphasizes the methodological issue on the âvalidityâ of field studies. It is an inductive method to generate theories (or explanations) about phenomena from the use of a systematic analysis of empirical data. However, research works based on this technique still do not incorporate the use of design models. This work presents a balance solution between the sensibility of field data richness and software design practice. This solution is based on three main points: 1) An inductive process of qualitative research based on the phases of Grounded Theory to build representations of human practices according to systematic data analysis. These representations are validated through the use of principles of interpretative qualitative research. 2) Use of an analytical framework to make the qualitative interpretation of data more directed to software conceptualization. The framework incorporates reformulations of Activity Theory concepts and a catalogue of pre-defined contextual factors of analysis. 3) Guidelines to generate i* models of strategic social dependencies from descriptions of activities, so as to provide a different view of the social system, besides transformational analysis which satisfy software engineersâ needs. The process was validated through a qualitative case study on the manipulation of medical records by anesthesiologists.

ASSUNTO(S)

teoria da atividade e modelagem organizacional pesquisa qualitativa activity theory and organizational modeling qualitative research requirement engineering ciencia da computacao engenharia de requisitos

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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