Knowledge Conversion in Software Requirement Elicitation

Firstly, the characteristics of tacit requirements are analyzed. Then the knowledge conversion of requirement elicitation from socialization to externalization, to combination and to internalization are exported according to SECI Spiral Model. These processes are processes dealing with tacit and explicit requirements. And when analyzing the knowledge flow, we find that the bottleneck of requirement eliciting is the knowledge dissymmetry between clients and developers. It is concluded that the knowledge gap is the driving force of software requirements elicitation and the foundation of their cooperation. Clients must learn actively from requirement experts, or developers. Developers should learn the business knowledge from requirement experts and clients actively. What´s more, requirement experts must learn all the knowledge, because they are the bridge over the gap. This is an iterative learning process, in which each part gets feedback from other parts. Finally, based on SECI Spiral Model and knowledge flow theory aforementioned, a knowledge conversion model is put forward. In this model there are some factors must be paid attention to in requirement elicitation, such as communication technology, lenient interrelationship, multi-validation, etc. Finally, the model is explained with two examples.