Requirements Elicitation and Specification using the S-BPM Paradigm

Recognizing the essential role of eliciting stakeholder needs and expectations when specifying system requirements from an interaction perspective, corresponding research has been triggered in subject-oriented requirements engineering. Thereby, requirements elicitation from a functional and interactional perspective overcomes essential deficiencies in behavior-centered process and application development: the lack of structuring elicitation and modelling, and the lack of prescribed deliverables. In this paper, the rationale of the subject-oriented approach is detailed and its application is exemplified. The cases show how system requirements evolve along multi-dimensional elicitation and specification activities. The approach is effective at delivering semantically coherent, and consistent requirements specifications. A crucial benefit seems to be scaffolding, in particular, when communication between stakeholders and/or interaction between systems is considered in addition to a purely functional or task-centered perspective. Finally, the generated representations can be used throughout development, thus supporting continuous evolvement.