Requirements elicitation in open source software development: a case study

A growing body of empirical research has examined large, successful open source software projects such as the Linux kernel, Apache web server, and Mozilla web browser. Do these results extend to small open source efforts involving a handful of developers? A study of the OpenEMR open source electronic medical record project was conducted, with the goal of understanding how requirements are elicited, documented, agreed, and validated in a small open source software project The results show that the majority of features are asserted by developers, based on either their personal experience, or knowledge of users’ needs. Relatively few were requested directly by users. Validation and documentation took the form of informal discussions via the project’s developer mailing list. These results are consistent with an earlier study of the Firefox web browser, suggesting that there is a common open source requirements approach that is independent of project size.