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What is it?
The Inquiry Cycle is a simple, informal pattern for improving a set of requirements (or any other document, actually). It uses conversation as a metaphor for the RE (Requirements Engineering) process. It is an effective technique for elaborating a set of requirements, examining hidden assumptions, and driving a RE effort towards completion.
The Inquiry Cycle consists of three phases:
- requirements documentation
- requirements discussion
- requirements evolution
and requirements discussion is divided into three steps:
- question
- answer
- reason for answer
These phases and steps are repeated in a cycle until the requirements are satisfactory.
Example
The example gives one pass through the Inquiry Cycle for the Meeting Scheduler problem. The part of the documentation that is examined is event 3 of Scenario 8; a question is asked (Q33), resulting in two answers (A9 and A26) that address different aspects of the question; and the documentation evolves through the addition of a new requirement and a clarification of existing requirement Rq3.
| Documentation | Sc8.3. | "Esther determines the drop-dead date is Friday noon." |
|---|---|---|
| Question | Q33. | Are there constraints on the drop range between now and the date range? |
| Answer | A9. | No meeting is held on weekends. |
| A26. | Initiator specifies drop-dead date in the future. It must be at least a day before the end of the date range. There is one drop-dead date for all participants. | |
| Evolution | C17. | Add new requirement: "The initiator specifies a drop-dead date when calling the meeting. If a participant has not replied by the drop-dead date, the scheduler prepares a list of possible meeting times based on the replies it has received." |
| C19. | Add to Rq3: "A date range for a meeting must be in the future and the end date must be later than the start date." |
Kinds of questions for the Discussion phase
The authors found that several kinds of questions triggered good requirements discussions:
- What-is
- Asking for more information about a requirement (not a scenario), and usually answered by a definition. Example: "What is meant by 'keeping participants involved'?"
- How-to
- Asking how some action is performed; usually asked about a scenario.
- Who
- Confirming who the responsible agent is.
- What-kinds-of
- Asking for further refinement of a concept, for example "What kinds of meetings should be supported?"
- When
- Asking about the timing constraints on some event or events. Example: "When should the scheduler stop waiting for a participant to respond,\ and just go ahead and schedule the meeting?"
- Relationships
- Asking how one requirement is related to another. Example: "What is the relationship between the drop-dead date and the proposed date range for the meeting?"
Most discussion-phase questions are about the issue under consideration at the moment, but some questions lead to important parenthetical insights, not on the topic at hand but (usually) about an assumption that no one had thought to question before. Some kinds of these questions are:
- What-if
- Asking about cases in which an action goes wrong or its preconditions aren't satisfied. Example: "What would happen if the latecomer responds with preferences after the meeting has already been scheduled, and the preferences conflict with the schedule?"
- Follow-on questions
-
Questions that arise from asking another question.
An important subcategory is
generalizations of follow-on questions
(these are particularly effective).
Example of follow-on questions Original question: Is an important participant's attendance vital? In other words,
can the meeting proceed if not all important participants are present?Follow-on question: Is an active participant's attendance vital? Generalization: Which participants are necessary for the meeting? A further generalization: What are the minimum conditions for holding the meeting?
