Information avoidance in requirements determination for systems development

Information requirements determination (IRD) is arguably the most important activity in systems development, since all remaining stages of the development process depend on its success. Since the goal of analysts is to collect an accurate and complete (to the extent possible) set of requirements, cognitive biases that obstruct or prevent this goal are a serious threat to the systems development process. The IRD process is a form of information behavior, and information avoidance is one of several related biases affecting information intake during information behavior. If an analyst has pre-conceived ideas about systems requirements, he may elicit only certain types of information from the user and he is likely to ignore conflicting information that the user may offer. This behavior can therefore result in increased risk to the accuracy and completeness of requirements for the system. The present paper investigates information avoidance in the IRD process.