The Initialization of Conversations for Specification: A Context of Social Norms

Virtual professional communities require a legitimate user-driven specification approach of their network information systems. The specification changes produced should be legitimate in the sense that they are not only meaningful but also acceptable to all members of the community. We regard specification processes as conversations for specification. A Specification Process Model is presented that is grounded in the theory of communicative action, and builds upon DEMO and the rational discourse represented in the Transaction Process Model. To initialize the conversations for specification, social norms play an important role. The RENISYS method is introduced which supports such contextualized conversations for specification.