Analysing Socio - Technical System Requirements

Few RE methods address analysis of socio-technical system requirements. This paper describes a method for analysing dependencies between computer systems and users/stakeholders in the operational environment. Domain scenarios describing the system and its context are used to create an environment model based on the i* notation. The dependencies between inbound and outbound events between the system and its usage environment are analysed to elicit requirements to process system input or generate system output. Coupling metrics are applied to these events to assess the degree of dependencies between the system and the users. High level requirements are suggested to deal with different types of organisational design. The method is illustrated with a case study of a service engineer support system.