Does dearth mean something different than “lack” here?

I come from a manufacturing and mechanical design background. We learned a design process including tools to deal with the qualitative aspect of requirements elicitation in each project.

A book I found helpful while transitioning to a business analyst position involved with software projects is [1].

There is also the social sciences and maybe the humanities that use qualitative research methods. An example is enthographic research.

I think there is plenty out there to use as a starting point.

[1]https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/software-requireme...