=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=User-centered Requirements Elicitation for Business Intelligence Solutions
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-663/paper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-663
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/wsbi/MethM10
}}
==User-centered Requirements Elicitation for Business Intelligence Solutions==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-663/paper6.pdf
User-centered Requirements Elicitation for Business
Intelligence Solutions
Hendrik Meth and Alexander Mädche
University of Mannheim
Chair of Information Systems IV - Enterprise Information Systems
68131 Mannheim, Germany
meth@eris.uni-mannheim.de
Abstract
The implementation of Business Intelligence solutions, which support the planning, con-
trolling and coordination processes of a company have been a high priority in the project
portfolio of many IT departments in the last years. However, many of these projects could
not fulfill the expectations due to an insufficient match with the actual business require-
ments. The research project described in this paper aims at closing this gap by develop-
ing an integrated, domain-specific method and tool support to enable user-centered re-
quirements elicitation for BI solutions.
1 Motivation and research issue
As more and more decision makers demand computerized support of their work, Business
Intelligence (BI) software has become a shared commodity across organizations. Howev-
er, in the design process of BI software and especially in the requirements engineering
phase a lot of questions remain unanswered, resulting in BI projects that do not match
project goals. According to the Business Intelligence literature, one of the main problems
seems to be that business departments have difficulties to define their BI require-
ments. This problem is reported both concerning the general outcome of the process
(Paim & Castro, 2003) as well as for the sub-processes BI requirements elicitation and BI
requirements documentation (Strauch & Winter, 2002).
To be more specific, in the elicitation phase, one of the main questions to be answered in
a BI project is the question, which reports and which key figures are needed. These kinds
40 Hendrik Meth and Alexander Mädche
of requirements often cannot be articulated by the users of the BI system, and decisions
often follow gut instincts instead of a methodic approach (Röglinger, Reinwald, & Meier,
2009). Another aspect of this problem is the fact, that business requirements often focus
on functional requirements and non-functional requirements like usability and user expe-
rience goals are neglected (Chung & do Prado Leite, 2009).
Solutions, which are developed following these vague requirements, in many cases do not
solve the underlying business needs, resulting in project failures. This is why well-
defined information and systems requirements are stated as one of the top ten critical
success factors for BI systems (Arnott, 2008). One of the causes of this problem is the
fact, that substantial expert know-how is needed to run the BI requirements elicitation
process, which is often resulting in comprehensive demand for training measures and/or
expert resources (Kauppinen, Vartiainen, Kontio, Kujala, & Sulonen, 2004).
The depicted problem shall be resolved by the definition of an integrated, domain-specific
method and tool support to enable user-centered requirements elicitation for BI solutions.
Within the BI domain, the research will focus on reporting and data warehouse applica-
tions. To be able to design this artifact the following research question needs to be ans-
wered:
How can the elicitation of BI requirements be optimized to enable BI solutions with in-
creased user acceptance and decreased implementation efforts?
2 Related work
By analyzing the Business Intelligence literature, the following perspectives have been
identified to evaluate related work:
Scenario: Does the approach only cover Enterprise BI, or also smaller solutions, which
are not necessarily developed in projects? The latter BI solutions aim at providing analyt-
ics functionality for a single department or even a single person and typically have less
complex architecture, data modeling and transformation requirements. Nevertheless, the
reporting requirements of these solutions might be as complex as in the Enterprise BI
scenario, demanding for equivalent requirements elicitation support
User experience: Does the approach explicitly consider aspects of user experience?
Elicitation support: Is the elicitation of requirements supported by methods or tools?
Becker, Seidel, & Janiesch (2007) describe a model based approach to requirements spe-
cification for reporting using the H2 modeling language to document data warehouse and
reporting requirements. Kumar, Gosain, and Singh (2009) focus on the early phases of
requirements for data warehouses and propose an agent-goal-decision-information model
User-centered Requirements Elicitation for Business Intelligence Solutions 41
to visualize dependencies amongst the stakeholders. Paim and Castro (2003) present an
approach for data warehouse requirements definition and management, explicitly incor-
porating non functional requirements. Jürck, Förtsch, Jahn, and Ulbrich-vom Ende (2009)
describe the usage of recommender systems for a personalized selection of reports and
present a prototype supporting this process. Röglinger et al. (2009) present an algorithm
and a prototype to select key figures based on empirical relations like the number and
weight of connections to other key figures and to the top key figure of the company. Few
(2006) provides guidelines for effective, visual communication of information using BI
dashboards and describes which visualization (e.g. bar graph, line graph) is appropriate in
which information scenario (e.g. lookup, comparison, trend analysis).
Scenario User Experience Elicitation Support
suggestion of existing
(Becker et no explicit considera- methods / limited tool
al., 2007) Enterprise BI tion support
(Kumar et no explicit considera- only abstract model / no
al., 2009) Enterprise BI tion tool support
general consideration suggestion of existing
(Paim & of non functional re- methods / no tool sup-
Castro, 2003) Enterprise BI quirements port
(Jürck et al., no explicit considera- yes (but only existing
2009) Enterprise BI tion reports)
(Röglinger et no explicit considera- yes (but only for key
al., 2009) Enterprise BI tion figures)
yes (but only for visuali-
(Few, 2006) Enterprise BI yes zation) / no tool support
Table 1: Evaluation of related work
The table shows, that none of the approaches differentiates between different BI scena-
rios. User experience is only explicitly considered in Few’s (Few, 2006) approach and
tool support is also just considered in three approaches ((Becker et al., 2007), (Jürck et
al., 2009) and (Röglinger et al., 2009))
3 Conceptual architecture
As stated earlier, the research project aims at developing an artifact to overcome the de-
scribed problems. This artifact shall satisfy the following requirements:
Scenario differentiation: The solution will provide support for Enterprise BI, Depart-
mental BI and Personal BI scenarios.
42 Hendrik Meth and Alexander Mädche
User centered approach: The targeted requirements elicitation process follows the prin-
ciple of user-centered design and aims at empowering end-users to specify their BI re-
quirements with no / low involvement of IT experts. This shall be realized by the usage of
supportive structures and algorithms, which will be explained below in more detail. The
second consequence of the user-centered approach is the explicit consideration of user
experience aspects as requirements for the BI solution. This shall be realized by the in-
corporation of design guidelines, which will be explained below in more detail.
Elicitation method and tool support: Different methods shall be used to support the
requirements elicitation process. These methods shall be integrated into a guided process,
implemented in a tool.
Supportive structures: Supportive structures may consist of question and wizard struc-
tures, implemented in a software tool which guides the user through the process of re-
quirements elicitation. Similar to other software guided processes (like e.g. tax statement
software solutions) the structures shall also provide the user with background information
about the specific step he is currently working on.
Guidelines and dependent requirements: In some cases the definition of a requirement
depends on other requirements (Hildenbrand & Geisser, 2005). For example a user de-
mands for a graphic visualization of defined data but cannot articulate the concrete form
of the visualization. In cases like this, there are sometimes guidelines, which can be used
to derive a dependant requirement (in this case a specific visualization, e.g. a pie chart)
from an independent requirement (in this case the requirement for visualization in gener-
al). One of the concept tasks will therefore be the incorporation of guidelines into if-then-
routines that determine the described dependent requirements.
User-centered Requirements Elicitation for Business Intelligence Solutions 43
Time
Procurement
Management
Reporting
Solution
From Solution
BI Solutions
Scenarios to
Solutions
Customer Relationship
Management Solution
Project
Purchasing Sales Mgmt. URBIS
generate
Business domain / process specific
templates
URBIS-
Framework
URBIS URBIS
elicit store
Figure 1: URBIS framework and usage scenarios
Fulfilling the depicted requirements, the artifact shall enable user-centered requirements
elicitation for BI solutions (URBIS). The centerpiece of this artifact will be a module that
supports the elicitation process, connected to a database which stores the defined re-
quirements. The business /domain content to elicit the requirements shall be analyzed in
the research project for one or two sample domains and be supplied in dedicated tem-
plates which are used during the elicitation process. A potential add-on to this architec-
ture would be an interface to generate BI applications / prototypes for dedicated BI tools
based on the defined requirements.
4 Summary and future work
Many BI projects do no fulfill the set expectations due to a mismatch with the initial
business requirements. This paper presented the approach of a recently started research
project to close this gap by developing an artifact that enables the end-user to elicit BI
requirements in a guided process. The project will proceed by further analysis of the state
of the art in requirements elicitation within the BI domain and the corresponding prob-
lems. This analysis will be followed by a further limitation of the scope to a specific ap-
plication domain (e.g. sales reporting within high tech industry), which will also deter-
mine the group of relevant experts for the following interviews. Subsequently, the pro-
posed artifact will be conceptualized, implemented and evaluated iteratively. The project
44 Hendrik Meth and Alexander Mädche
is following a design science approach, focusing on artifact development and using exist-
ing theories like the Technology Acceptance Model as a reference framework (Davis,
1989).
5 References
Arnott, D. (2008). Success Factors for Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence
Systems. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003& con-
text=acis2008
Becker, J., Seidel, S., & Janiesch, C. (2007). Konzeption des
Unternehmensreportings- Ein modellgestütztes Vorgehensmodellzur fachkonzeptionellen
Spezifikation. Wirtschaftsinformatik Proceedings 2007, 605-622.
Chung, L., & do Prado Leite, J. (2009). On Non-Functional Requirements in Soft-
ware Engineering. In Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications (pp. 363-379).
Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02463-4_19
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Accep-
tance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319-340. doi:Article
Few, S. (2006). Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication
of Data (1st ed.). O'Reilly Media.
Hildenbrand, T., & Geisser, M. (2005). Eine Methode zur kollaborativen Anforde-
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University of Mannheim, Department of Information Systems 1.
Jürck, C., Förtsch, T., Jahn, B. U., & Ulbrich-vom Ende, A. (2009). Einsatz von
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