A Case Study of Critical System Heuristics in a Student Project Setting

Abstract: This thesis aims to study the use of Critical System Heuristic (CSH) in the requirements engineering (RE) process of a student software project. We have studied a software project within the framework of the TDDD96 course at Linköping University. The project consisted of a group of computer science students working with a representative from a company. As part of the course, the students had done the sustainability exercise SusAF, in which they evaluated their project based on multiple sustainability metrics. We have conducted one round of interviews with the RE student, the company representative, and an expert in the area. The answers were encoded and mapped to 12 CSH questions before being presented in the Ideal map table. The results produced by CSH show the many benefits of integrating CSH into the course. We have proposed different ways of integrating CSH with the SusAF exercise. From the result, we realized the importance of consulting a third party that could provide an outside perspective on different issues. However, an essential aspect of using CSH is to consult the appropriate party. To this end, we found that CSH could be used internally to point in the right direction.