Towards dialogue based, computer aided software requirements elicitation

Abstract: Several approaches have been presented, which aim to extract models from natural language specifications. These approaches have inherent weaknesses for they assume an initial problem understanding that is perfect, and they leave no room for feedback. Motivated by real-world collaboration settings between requirements engineers and customers, this paper proposes an interaction blueprint that aims for dialogue based, computer aided software requirements analysis. Compared to mere model extraction approaches, this interaction blueprint encourages individuality, creativity and genuine compromise. A simplistic Experiment was conducted to showcase the general idea. This paper discusses the experiment as well as the proposed interaction blueprint and argues, that advancements in natural language processing and generative AI might lead to significant progress in a foreseeable future. However, for that, there is a need to move away from a magical black box expectation and instead moving towards a dialogue based approach that recognizes the individuality that is an undeniable part of requirements engineering.