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The Intertwining of Enterprise Strategy and Requirements

  • Conference paper
Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 14))

Abstract

Requirements Engineering techniques need to focus not only on the target technical system, as has traditionally been the case, but also on the interplay between business and system functionality. Whether a business wishes to exploit advances in technology to achieve new strategic objectives or to organise work in innovative ways, the process of Requirements Engineering could and should present opportunities for modelling and evaluating the potential impact that technology can bring about to the enterprise.This chapter discusses a co-designing process that offers opportunities of change to both the business and its underlying technical systems, in a synergistic manner. In these design situations some of the most challenging projects involve multiple stakeholders from different participating organisations, subcontractors, divisions etc who may have a diversity of expertise, come from different organisational cultures and often have competing goals. Stakeholders are faced with many different alternative future ‘worlds’ each one demanding a possibly different development strategy.There are acute questions about the potential structure of the new business system and how key variables in this structure could impact on the dynamics of the system. This chapter presents a framework which enables the evaluation of requirements through (a) system dynamics modelling, (b) ontology modelling, (c) scenario modelling and (d) rationale modelling. System dynamics modelling is used to define the behaviour of an enterprise system in terms of four perspectives. Ontology modelling is used to formally define invariant components of the physical and social world within the enterprise domain. Scenario modelling is used to identify critical variables and by quantitatively analyzing the effects of these variables through simulation to better understand the dynamic behaviour of the possible future structures. Rationale modelling is used to assist collaborative discussions when considering either ontology models or scenarios for change, developing maps, which chart the assumptions and reasoning behind key decisions during the requirements process.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Business School, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, United Kingdom

    Pericles Loucopoulos

  2. Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

    Joy Garfield

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  1. Pericles Loucopoulos
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  2. Joy Garfield
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Kalle Lyytinen

  2. Loughborough University, UK

    Pericles Loucopoulos

  3. University of Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

  4. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Bill Robinson

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Loucopoulos, P., Garfield, J. (2009). The Intertwining of Enterprise Strategy and Requirements. In: Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., Robinson, B. (eds) Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 14. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-92965-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-92966-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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