In Requirements Engineering, requirements elicitation aims the acquisition of information from the stakeholders of a system-to-be. An important task during elicitation is to identify and render explicit the stakeholders' implicit assumptions about the system-to-be and its environment. Purpose of doing so is to identify omissions in, and conflicts between requirements. This paper o?ers a conceptual framework for the identi?cation and documentation of default requirements that stakeholders may be using. The framework is relevant for practice, as it forms a check-list for types of questions to use during elicitation. An empirical validation is described, and guidelines for elicitation are drawn.
A method for requirements analysis is proposed that accounts for individual and personal goals, and the effect of time and context on personal requirements. First a framework to analyse the issues inherent in requirements that change over time and location is proposed. The implications of the framework on system architecture are considered as three implementation pathways: functional specifications, development of customisable features and automatic adaptation by the system. These pathways imply the need to analyse system architecture requirements. A scenario-based analysis method is described for specifying requirements goals and their potential change. The method addresses goal setting for measurement and monitoring, and conflict resolution when requirements at different layers (group, individual) and from different sources (personal, advice from an external authority) conflict. The method links requirements analysis to design by modelling alternative solution pathways. Different implementation pathways have cost–benefit implications for stakeholders, so cost–benefit analysis techniques are proposed to assess trade-offs between goals and implementation strategies. The use of the framework is illustrated with two case studies in assistive technology domains: e-mail and a personalised navigation system. The first case study illustrates personal requirements to help cognitively disabled users communicate via e-mail, while the second addresses personal and mobile requirements to help disabled users make journeys on their own, assisted by a mobile PDA guide. In both case studies the experience from requirements analysis to implementation, requirements monitoring, and requirements evolution is reported. In this paper, we review current requirements engineering (RE) research and identify future research directions suggested by emerging software needs. First, we overview the state of the art in RE research. The research is considered with respect to technologies developed to address specific requirements tasks, such as elicitation, modeling, and analysis. Such a review enables us to identify mature areas of research, as well as areas that warrant further investigation. Next, we review several strategies for performing and extending RE research results, to help delineate the scope of future research directions. Finally, we highlight what we consider to be the "hot" current and future research topics, which aim to address RE needs for emerging systems of the future.