Towards Modeling and Reasoning Support for Early-Phase Requirements Engineering

  • Authors:

  • Eric S. K. Yu

  • Affiliations:

  • -

  • Venue:
  • RE '97 Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

Requirements are usually understood as stating what a system is supposed to do, as opposed to how it should do it. However, understanding the organizational context and rationales (the "Whys'') that lead up to systems requirements can be just as important for the ongoing success of the system. Requirements modeling techniques can be used to help deal with the knowledge and reasoning needed in this earlier phase of requirements engineering. However, most existing requirements techniques are intended more for the later phase of requirements engineering, which focuses on completeness, consistency, and automated verification of requirements. In contrast, the early phase aims to model and analyze stakeholder interests and how they might be addressed, or compromised, by various system-and-environment alternatives. This paper argues, therefore, that a different kind of modeling and reasoning support is needed for the early phase. An outline of the i* framework is given as an example of a step in this direction. Meeting scheduling is used as a domain example.