Biases in Stakeholder Elicitation as a Precursor to the Systems Architecting Process

Many systems engineering projects begin with the involvement of stakeholders to aid in decision-making processes. As an application of systems engineering, systems architecture involves the documentation of stakeholder needs gathered via elicitation and the transformation of these needs into requirements for a system. Within human-machine teaming, systems architecture allows for the creation of a system with desired characteristics elicited from stakeholders involved with the project or system. Though stakeholders can be excellent sources for expert opinion, vested interests in a project may potentially bias stakeholders and impact decision-making processes. These biases may influence the design of the system architecture, potentially resulting in a system that is developed with unbalanced and misrepresented stakeholder preferences. This paper presents an activity analysis of the Stakeholder Needs and Requirements Process as described in the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) to identify potential biases associated with this elicitation process. As part of the research presented in this paper, a workshop was conducted where currently practicing systems architects provided feedback regarding perceptions of biases encountered during the elicitation process. The findings of this research will aid systems architects, developers, and users in understanding how biases may impact stakeholder elicitation within the architecting process.