Application of human error theories for the process improvement of Requirements Engineering

Problems with the structuring and execution of the Requirements Engineering (RE) process can lead to project failure. As the involved activities are essentially human and subjective, the importance of the human factor must be considered. The possible correlation between human errors and the problems that may occur in the RE process is explored in this paper in order to propose a process improvement approach, which applies the theories of human error to build an expert system for automated diagnosis of problems. This approach starts by assessing the importance of individual types of human errors in different contexts using questionnaires to extract knowledge from RE practitioners. A method for managing the priorities of solutions to improve a given process is then proposed and a prototype application is implemented for evaluation with practitioners. The activities with RE practitioners also provide data that are used to construct and evaluate estimators of the presence of human errors and the affected phases of the RE process. Most of the volunteering participants agree that knowledge of error typologies may help to improve their processes to avoid problems.