Getting to the Shalls

Abstract

Sensemaking in Requirements Engineering (RE) relies on knowledge transfer, communication, and negotiation of project stakeholders. It is a critical and challenging aspect of Information Systems (IS) development. One of the most fundamental aspects of RE is the specification of traceable, unambiguous, and operationalizable functional and nonfunctional requirements. This remains a nontrivial task in the face of the complexity inherent in RE due to the lack of well-documented, systematic procedures that facilitate a structured analysis of the qualitative data from stakeholder interviews, observations, and documents that are typically the input to this activity. This research develops a systematic and traceable procedure, for non-functional requirements the Grounded and Linguistic-Based Requirements Analysis Procedure (GLAP), which can fill this gap by incorporating perspectives from Grounded Theory Method, linguistic analysis of language quality, Volere typology, and the Nonfunctional Requirements Framework without significantly deviating from existing practice. The application of GLAP is described along with empirical illustrations using RE data from a redesign initiative of a library website of a public university in the United States. An outlook is given on further work and necessary evaluation steps.