Essays on Information Elicitation for Decision Making in Systems Engineering

: Improving Completeness of Requirements

Résumé

In contemporary society, leaders and managers in organizations are increasingly confronted with complex decision problems. To deal with such problems, decision-makers need quality information, to help them identify and design alternatives, and to select the best possible solution among these alternatives. Collecting such information is a complex activity. Stakeholders in organizations do not have sharp and predictable behaviors when it comes to sharing information; they may not be aware of which information decision-makers seek, might not be committed to the project of decision-makers, or may decide to not share specific information because it is strategic, and they do not trust the decision-makers enough to disclose such information. These are some examples, from the long list of challenges that decision-makers can encounter when communicating with business stakeholders. These challenges act as filters during elicitation, which reduce the completeness of information decision-makers have at hand.

This thesis presents a series of empirical studies conducted on elicitation filters in the context of requirements engineering. The purpose of such research is to raise awareness of decision-makers about the existence of elicitation filters, to illustrate how the filters prevent decision-makers from reaching optimal solutions for the problems they face, and to provide a set of descriptive tools that decision-makers can use as a way to mitigate the impact of filters on their decisions. While the thesis focuses on elicitation filters in the context of requirements engineering, its contribution suggests new research avenues for management sciences, where complex decision problems are pervasive, and quality information needs to be acquired in as complete a way as feasible.

la date de réponse	2 mars 2016
langue originale	Français
L'institution diplômante	Universite de Namur
Sponsors	Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.-FNRS
Superviseur	Stephane Faulkner (Copromoteur), Ivan Jureta (Copromoteur), Annick Castiaux (Président), Neil Maiden (Jury), Anthony Cleve (Jury) & Manuel Kolp (Jury)