Using a Hybrid Method for Formalizing Informal Stakeholder Requirements Inputs

Abstract

Success of software development depends on the quality of the requirements specification. Moreover, good - sufficiently complete, consistent, traceable, and testable - requirements are a prerequisite for later activities of the development project. Without understanding what the stakeholders really want and need, and writing these requirements, projects will not develop what the stakeholders wanted. During the development of the WinWin negotiation model and the EasyWinWin requirements negotiation method, we have gained considerable experience in capturing informal requirements in over 100 projects. However, the transition from informal representations to semi-formal and formal representations is still a challenging problem. Based on our analysis of the projects to date, we have developed an integrated set of gap-bridging methods as a hybrid method to formalize informal stakeholder requirements inputs. The basic idea is that orchestrating these gap-bridging methods through the requirements engineering process can significantly eliminate requirements related problems and ease the process of formality transition.