Soft Systems in Requirements Engineering: A Case Study

Soft systems methodology should offer substantial benefits in managing expectations and requirements for a software-intensive system, but the benefits have not yet been examined empirically. This paper reports an exploratory case study investigating the hypothesis that “soft systems approach would identify all the flaws in requirements practices and suggest improvements suited to an organization’s context”. We analyzed problematic requirements practices in an ongoing software project, modeled potential changes, and asked the project team to assess the organizational fit of these changes. We conclude that soft systems methodology could indeed uncover a relatively complete set of flaws in requirements engineering, but not all changes were necessary.