Applying Personal Construct Theory to Requirements Elicitation

One of the main approaches to Requirements Engineering is Goal-Oriented Requirement Engineering. This approach, based in Artificial Intelligence models, argues that goals are a natural and high level abstraction concept to elicit and represent requirements. Another advantage of goals is that they help non-functional requirements representation and reasoning. Although the goal oriented approach helps in representation and analysis, the problem of eliciting goals and their refinement is not trivial. In this article, we explore several applications to goal elicitation using a psychological theory: the Personal Construct Theory (PCT). This theory, stated by Kelly in 1955, can be used to elicit goals and their relationships. The choice of this theory is based in that it has a statistical base, therefore it is more precise and user independent than others. Finally, PCT can be amenable to automation by means of the Repertory Grid technique, widely studied in the Knowledge eliciting field.