A conceptual foundation of requirements engineering for business information systems

Abstract

Requirements engineering (RE) is a crucial discipline when developing software systems. Applying RE activities successfully in the domain of business information systems (BIS) requires a deep and common understanding on how concepts of RE and business analysis are related. We consider this fact as being a challenge as currently no commonly accepted RE process exits that bridges the gap between these two disciplines. This results in unclear mappings and finally makes it difficult to align methods that exist in both areas. To tackle this challenge, we propose a reference issue model that aims to capture definitions and relations of the issues that are typically relevant in BIS development. In this context, we describe our followed research approach, an underlying meta-model as well as an exemplary instantiation and usage of the reference issue model. This contribution shall serve as a foundation for the integration of RE and business analysis as well as for the development of corresponding analysis approaches. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.