Determining an organization's information requirements

Abstract

The issue of information requirements of an organization and their specifications span two isolated territories. One territory is that of organization and management and the other belongs to technicians. There is a considerable gap between these two territories. Research in requirements engineering (technician's side) has primarily concentrated on designing and developing formal languages to document and analyze user requirements, once they have been determined. This research has ignored the organizational issues involved in information requirements determination. Research in the field of organization and management has addressed the organizational issues which affect information requirements of an organization. Various frameworks reported in the literature provide insights, but they cannot be considered as methods of determining requirements. Little work has been done on the process of determining requirements. This process must start with the understanding of an organization and end with a formal specification of information requirements. Here, it is worth emphasizing the fact that the process of determining and specifying information requirements of an organization is very different from the process of specifying design requirements of an information system. Therefore, program design methodologies, which are helpful in designing a system are not suitable for the process of determining and specifying information requirements of an organization.This paper discusses the state of the art in information requirements determination methodologies. Excluded are those methodologies which emphasize system design and have little to offer for requirements determination of an organization.