Combining Process Modeling and Requirements Engineering: An Experience Report

Abstract

Using IT development efforts for achieving new business goals is a challenging task. Optimally, IT projects and solutions should be aligned to answer the real requirements of actual business development targets. Process modeling has been widely applied as a tool for business process and IT development. The goal of this study is to investigate how to combine process modeling and requirements engineering (RE) in software development projects. We studied the use of process modeling focused Business-driven development (BDD) method and other modeling techniques to support complex large projects in the outsourced environment. The results presented here are based on 17 interviews, a study of 4 projects implemented with the BDD method and the experiences gathered from 11 other large projects at the case study organization. This report outlines the results of combining process modeling to use case, business rule and other requirements and architecture modeling. To a large extent, the results were positive and indicate the benefits for using business process modeling as a visual tool for combining business and IT development, and as a part of the requirements. However, the perspective and abstraction level for process modeling should be carefully selected. Our study concludes also that requirements modeling should cover different aspects from both project and enterprise context in a comprehensive manner.