Tailoring Requirements Negotiation to Sustainability

Abstract

Requirements Engineering (RE) plays a critical role in software system development and is argued to be the key leverage point for practitioners who want to design sustainable software-intensive systems. However, existing RE methods and tools do not explicitly facilitate the discussion and negotiation of sustainability-related concerns. This leads to insufficient or onedimensional perceptions of sustainability. In this paper, we discuss our understanding of sustainability and its relationship with requirements. Based on the outcomes of this discussion, we have extended the WinWin Negotiation Model by incorporating sustainability concepts so that the negotiation also includes the ability to consider the impact of requirements on sustainability. Applying this negotiation method in an exploratory industrial case study, we have learned that this approach stimulates the discussion on sustainability and its multiple dimensions. It also allows practitioners to reflect on requirements and their effects on sustainability. However, we have also observed that further in-depth requirements analysis is needed to analyse the long-term effects of requirements regarding sustainability.