SUPPORTING SYSTEMS-DEVELOPMENT BY CAPTURING DELIBERATIONS DURING REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

Support for various stakeholders involved in software projects (designers, maintenance personnel, project managers and executives, end users) can be provided by capturing the history about design decisions in the early stages of the systems development life cycle in a structured manner. Much of this knowledge, which we call the process knowledge, involving the deliberation on alternative requirements and design decisions, is lost in the course of designing and changing such systems. Using an empirical study of problem-solving behavior of individual and groups of information systems professionals, we have developed a conceptual model called REMAP (REpresentation and MAintenance of Process knowledge) that relates process knowledge to the objects that are created during the requirements engineering process. This model includes as part of it the Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) method, which is designed to record the argumentation related to deliberations. We have implemented a prototype of an environment based on our model that can provide assistance to the various stakeholders involved in the design and management of large systems.