Revisiting the Core Ontology and Problem in Requirements Engineering

TL;DR

This paper revisits the foundational ontology of Requirements Engineering, identifying gaps in the original model and proposing an extended ontology that incorporates stakeholder beliefs, desires, and attitudes to better define successful RE.

Contribution

It introduces an expanded core ontology for Requirements Engineering grounded in sound conceptual foundations, extending the original formulation by Zave and Jackson.

Findings

The new ontology covers additional stakeholder concerns like beliefs and desires.

It leads to an extended formulation of the requirements problem.

Establishes new standards for RE language representation and success criteria.

Abstract

In their seminal paper in the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Zave and Jackson established a core ontology for Requirements Engineering (RE) and used it to formulate the "requirements problem", thereby defining what it means to successfully complete RE. Given that stakeholders of the system-to-be communicate the information needed to perform RE, we show that Zave and Jackson's ontology is incomplete. It does not cover all types of basic concerns that the stakeholders communicate. These include beliefs, desires, intentions, and attitudes. In response, we propose a core ontology that covers these concerns and is grounded in sound conceptual foundations resting on a foundational ontology. The new core ontology for RE leads to a new formulation of the requirements problem that extends Zave and Jackson's formulation. We thereby establish new standards for what minimum information should be represented in RE languages and new criteria for determining whether RE has been successfully completed.