ReQuest

Requirements elicitation is where software projects most often go wrong, and it depends on a skill that is rarely taught explicitly: asking good questions. Students read about open and closed questions, probing, and follow-up, but get few chances to practise with a stakeholder and almost no feedback on the questions themselves.

ReQuest turns question asking into a skill learners can practise and be assessed on. Learners run an elicitation interview and receive formative feedback on their questions: type, coverage of the problem space, sequencing, and missed follow-ups. Repeated rounds give researchers fine-grained data on how novices’ questioning strategies develop.