12 - Analysing the workplace and user requirements: challenges for the development of methods for requirements engineering

Summary

Introduction

This chapter discusses the relationship between workplace studies and requirements engineering for computer systems, focusing primarily on user requirements. Superficially, the two activities have much in common. Though an exact definition of the term ‘requirements engineering’ is still to be agreed upon, various perspectives reveal that requirements engineers must understand a domain well enough to determine requirements for computer systems intended for use in that setting. For example, Davis (1993) proposes that requirements engineering is the analysis, documentation and ongoing evolution of both user needs and the external behaviour of the system to be built; Loucopoulos and Karakostas (1995: vii) suggest that ‘requirements engineering deals with activities which attempt to understand the exact needs of the users of a software intensive system and to translate such needs into precise and unambiguous statements which will subsequently be used in the development of the system’. Determining the needs of users will necessarily involve understanding the activities certain users are performing in order to accomplish their work, most particularly as the new technology might be intended to replace, transform or support existing work practices. Indeed, further definitions have sought to make such a perspective explicit in order to focus the debate on both social and technical concerns in requirements. Thus, Goguen (1994: 1) states that ‘requirements are properties that a system should have in order to succeed in the environment in which it will be used’.