A pattern-based method for building requirements documents in call-for-tender processes

Requirements Elicitation is one of the activities held during the Requirements Engineering stage. Its main goal is to discover the requirements that stakeholders demand on a system-to-be. There are many strategies to conduct this activity, whose success depends on their effectiveness and efficiency in their context of application. This paper presents our PABRE method for conducting the Requirements Elicitation activity. PABRE is built upon a Requirement Patterns Catalogue and its context of application is Off-The-Shelf selection projects driven by call-for-tender processes. The PABRE process selects patterns from the catalogue that apply to the particular selection project, and converts them into the real requirements that finally configure the project Requirements Document. We show some benefits of the pattern approach for requirements engineers and IT consultants, as well as for customers. Finally we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal and identify some future work.