The Brave New World of Design Requirements: Four Key Principles

Despite its undoubted success, Requirements Engineering (RE) needs a better alignment between its research focus and its grounding in practical needs as these needs have changed significantly recently. We explore changes in the environment, targets, and the process of requirements engineering (RE) that influence the nature of fundamental RE questions. Based on these explorations we propose four key principles that underlie current requirements processes: (1) intertwining of requirements with implementation and organizational contexts, (2) dynamic evolution of requirements, (3) architectures as a critical stabilizing force, and (4) high levels of design complexity. We make recommendations to refocus RE research agenda as to meet new challenges based on the review and analysis of these four key themes. We note several managerial and practical implications.