REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING DURING COMPLEX ISD: CASE STUDY OF AN INTERNATIONAL ICT COMPANY

Päivi Ovaska, Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, Lappeenranta, Finland
paivi.ovaska@saimia.fi
Larry Stapleton, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland
lstapleton@wit.ie

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a new interpretation of how ISD requirements can be collectively constructed in organizations through intersubjective sensemaking. The study described in this paper focuses upon how people in complex ISD contexts make sense of requirements as the evelopment process unfolds. Its primary contribution is to suggest that requirements shaping during an ISD project can be described as a sensemaking process of incongruence, filtering, negotiating and shifting of different attitudes and expectations. An interpretive case study is undertaken and it highlights how the relevant stakeholders of the project came to make sense of, and shape, their ISD process. The study suggests sensemaking as a potential new rationality for requirements engineering and for ISD in general, by complementing the traditional functional rationalism. It lays a basis for understanding the complex interactions that emerge during challenged ISD projects in their way of avigating out of difficulties.