Requirements Engineering and Response Time : A study about the Requirements Engineering and the Response Time of a Highly Interactive Web-based Application.

Abstract: Low response time is an important factor for any interactive system. However, web-based applications suffer sometimes from bad response times. This fact is not always important but for services depending on a  high degree of interactivity it can be severe. This thesis attempts to give an answer to the question whichi s the requirements engineering for best response time on a highly interactive Web-based application? The research approach is deductive based on a single-case study and using qualitative method. The case system is a web-based system that supports an experimental technique called Wizard-of-Oz. To tackle the research question an extensive review of literature on requirements engineering was made, and, for the case study itself, system requirements documents and interviews were included. The results include information about the specific requirements engineering process for the case system, response time, and quality attributes.The conclusion indicates the importance of response time requirements, hardware and software requirements, testing, but also a demonstration phase for desired interactive behaviour including response time. The latter is not previously identified as a major step in the general literature on requirements engineering but should definitively be noted by researchers and practitioner alike.