Effects of Electronic Communication Tools as Moderating Variables on Tacit Knowledge Elicitation in Interview Techniques for Small Software Developments

Interviewing is an important technique and initial step, during the process of software development, and due to its simplicity and awareness with the participants, it is largely used to conduct the detailed exploration during the process of requirements elicitation, but it is widely accepted that the experts face problems in collecting the tacit knowledge, which can interrupt the process of interviewing. In this paper, we have tested a proposed framework, to use the electronic communication tools, ‘Audio Podcasts’, ‘E-mails’, ‘Chatting’ (Online Chat Sessions) and ‘Hybrid’ (Combination of Podcasts + E-mails + Online Chatting), to discuss the detailed interview agenda, between the interviewer and interviewee, before the process of interviewing, for the semi-structured interviews. This study has used mixed methods. Firstly, the research has utilized the collected, quantitative data for testing the hypothesis to compare the difference of effects among all the e-tools, and secondly, after using these e-tools, evaluations have been done to find the difference of outcomes, through the qualitative data, collected via semi-structured interviews. Results suggest that the use of these electronic communication tools as moderating variables have strong impact on effectiveness. The findings are adequate to encourage further research work, and the outcomes have proved to be of great interest for the software specialists. Several recommendations have been given for the future research work.