A key challenge in the development of systems is the engagement of domain experts in their articulation, agreement, and validation of requirements. This challenge is particularly pronounced at the early requirements phase when multiple stakeholders from different divisions and often different organisations need to reach agreement about the intended systems. Decisions taken at this stage have a profound effect on the technical and economic feasibility of a project. The response of the Requirements Engineering community has been the introduction of a variety of conceptual modelling formalisms and appropriate requirements engineering processes. There is sufficient empirical evidence however that demonstrates the alienation of stakeholders from such notations and processes. The possible acquiescence of stakeholders approving a specification, without a deeper understanding of the modelled system, can lead to potentially profound problems due to differences between the expected value from the target system and that which is finally delivered. This talk will explore issues, challenges and approaches associated with capturing of, negotiating about and agreeing on early requirements from a design stance, using examples from large scale industrial applications.

Download powerpoint presentation (3.4Mb ZIP file)

This seminar is part of a series for the READ Group, in Maths and Computing and is to be used on a forthcoming course M883.

Watch the webcast replay >>