The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT)

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Critical Proficiencies for Requirements Analysts: Reflect a Real-world Needs

Requirements Determination (RD) is regarded as a critical phase of software development, In particular, the involvement of human interaction with RD diversity increase of communication issues such as miscommunication, misunderstandings between stakeholders that impact on software projects time and cost. Therefore, the software analysts’ communication skills are a key factor in project success. Originally analysts’ responsibility is RD tasks, however, due to the variety and the number of tasks that need to be covered, as well as different skills for each task, the sphere of their job is usually extended. This study is explored analysts’ proficiencies in requirement determination. An Ethnography method has been used with software Development Company in order to investigate the analysts’ proficiencies. Our research design conducted through an interpretive philosophy using thematic analysis data-driven approach. We have found that 18 critical proficiencies are impacting situations in which requirement determination occurs. We propose that the analysts’ proficiencies are a set of activities between analysts and users in which requirement determination situations consists of gathering users’ initial requirements follow by deeply understanding of the users’ requirements. Surprisingly, knowledge of requirements analysis and design solution methodologies including the traditional approach did not seem to be critical proficiencies for requirements analysts. In another hand, knowledge of commercial software and business process for various types of commercial business seem to be one of the most important critical proficiencies for requirements analysts.


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[19] Young R., The Requirements Engineering Handbook, Artech House, 2004. Issam Jebreen Completed his Undergraduate degree in computer information system from Al- Albayt University, Jordan. Then in 2014, he received his PhD in software engineering from Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. His research areas are packaged software implementation, Requirement Engineering, and software development methods. He had had a long and effective teaching career in different universities and countries. His role at AUT supervision/lecturing on the undergraduate level, leading a team for the delivery of software project, and updating resources for areas of the software development methodology, techniques, and methods. Beside his academic career he had been working at industry and research area, he had been working as Packaged Software Implementation consultant in Jordan as well as Research Assistant at University National Malaysia. Currently he is an assistant professor at Zarqa University. Ahmad Al-Qerem Obtaining a BSc in 1997 from JUST University and a Masters in computer science from Jordan University in 2002. PhD in mobile computing at Loughborough University, UK in 2008. He is interested in concurrency control for mobile computing environments, particularly transaction processing. He has published several papers in various areas of computer science and software engineering. After that he was appointed as associate professor at software engineering Depts. Zarqa University.