Value based Requirements Creation for Electronic Commerce Applications

Electronic commerce applications have special features compared to conventional information systems. First, because electronic commerce usually involves yet nonexisting business activities, requirements for e-commerce applications have to be created from scratch rather than elicited. Second, design decisions about e-business models and the associated information systems architecture cannot be sequentially made in a decoupled way, because business and technology considerations are strongly linked. On these counts, current methodology for requirements engineering is inadequate for electronic commerce applications. We outline a structured approach to e-commerce requirements creation. This e-VALUE approach enables one to clarify business model decisions to be made by management, by modelling the end-to-end value activities and exchanges in the e-commerce stakeholder network. In addition, this value network model enables system developers to derive high-level requirements concerning the software architecture.