L-SQUARE: Preliminary extension of the SQUARE methodology to address legal compliance

Abstract

Laws and regulations must be considered in the requirements engineering process to help ensure legal compliance when developing software or engineering systems. To incorporate legal compliance considerations into the requirements engineering process, we introduce a preliminary extension of the SQUARE methodology, called L-SQUARE. In this paper, we develop L-SQUARE by discussing legal compliance concerns at each of the traditional nine steps in SQUARE. Then, we link existing research in requirements engineering and the law to each step, emphasizing where compliance concerns can be addressed. This preliminary extension of SQUARE sets existing research into an established methodology for requirements engineering, creating a framework for situating current research in legal compliance, and identifying gaps for future work.