Agile Requirements Engineering as a Service: the Co-Creation of the Let’s Care Hub

FHV will present a paper entitled “Agile Requirements Engineering as a Service: the Co-Creation of the Let’s Care Hub” at the ICE-IEEE 2024 Conference, which will subsequently be published.

Below, the key points of the article are summarized, and the proposed framework is presented.

Research Context: Agile Requirements Engineering for Information and Knowledge-Management Systems

The engineering of Information and Knowledge-Management Systems presents significant challenges due to dynamic environments and diverse stakeholder needs. Traditional requirements engineering approaches result in dissatisfaction among stakeholders and users. To address these issues, agile methodologies have emerged, emphasizing responsiveness to stakeholder needs throughout system design and development. While the concept of agility in Information and Knowledge-Management Systems engineering is acknowledged, there remains a necessity to clearly define agile requirements engineering processes.

Objectives and Methodology

This article aims to explore the concepts of agile requirements engineering for Information Systems and to elaborate and present an approach for agile requirement engineering in the context of the Let’s Care international project work. The findings are based on a comprehensive systematic literature review, providing insights into existing approaches, commonly addressed themes or methods, suggestions by various authors, and identifying gaps that still need to be filled.

Proposed Agile Requirements Engineering Process

Building on the Service Science Theory and the systematic literature review, we propose a process to enhance agility in Information System Engineering. This process is illustrated in the figure below and emphasizes active collaboration with stakeholders throughout the requirements engineering process.

The key features of the proposed process model are:

1. Iterative Feedback Loop: unlike traditional linear approaches, our process model employs an iterative method based on continuous feedback from users, practitioners, and stakeholders.
2. Continuous Information Exchange: it facilitates frequent and continuous information exchange among various stakeholders, as opposed to the unidirectional flow typical of traditional models.
3. Active Co-Creation: it maintains ongoing communication with stakeholders to co-create the output, a critical aspect often neglected in conventional approaches.
4. Domain Understanding: it emphasizes domain understanding by leveraging domain experts' knowledge through active engagement with stakeholders and experts, as opposed to many approaches that proceed to design without adequately understanding the requirements.