A Customisable Model-based Approach for Business Information Systems’ Analysis

Requirements engineering (RE) builds a crucial part in software evolution. Nowadays, industries are more then ever facing the problem that the RE process is highly volatile due to the closeness to customer’s capabilities, to used process models and to produced specifications. The missing integration of RE into the development life cycle and the missing support of project-specific influences complicate the use of available RE approaches as a standardised, company-specific RE process that fits to the needs of individual (variable) project environments. In this report we provide an artefact-based RE reference model for business information systems. It serves as an orientation for producing precise specification documents being conformant to the reference model. Based on this reference model, we define a mechanism for a systematic and transparent customisation of the reference approach. The customisation mechanism defines how to customise the reference model at organisational environments concerning process-integration. This process integration is performed with the V-Modell XT, the standard development process for IT-projects within the German government. Furthermore we show how to customise it at project-levels according to variable project influences. We provide therefore a RE model that is highly customisable and deeply integrated into the development life cycle and prepare its application in real life projects. We lay the foundation for a systematic and integrated RE that fits to the needs variable project environments.