A systems‐theoretic articulation of stakeholder needs and system requirements

Abstract

The literature shows disparities in how fundamental systems engineering concepts in the area of requirements engineering, such as stakeholder needs, system requirements, requirements elicitation, requirements derivation, and requirements decomposition, are used within the communities‐of‐practice and in research. Such disparities can lead to conceptual and application inconsistencies, which have been shown to contribute to the formulation of poor requirements. In this paper, such concepts are articulated using systems theory as the underlying theoretical framework. The concepts of problem space, solution space, open system, and closed system are central to this work. It is argued that the proposed articulations facilitate avoiding usage disparity, ultimately resulting in better formulation of requirements. These articulations are supported by in‐depth examples that comprehensively cover different types of needs and requirements, and provide step‐by‐step insights into how elicitation, derivation, and decomposition occur within a problem formulation effort.

An experimentation framework for validating architectural properties as proxies for the ilities

“…I differentiate between the System of Interest (SoI) and the Context System (CS). SoI refers to a system that is put in place with the purpose of satisfying a need or pursuing an opportunity 48 . CS refers to a system formed by the SoI and the set of systems with which the SoI directly interacts 48 ; such systems are often referred to as external systems to the SoI.…”

“…SoI refers to a system that is put in place with the purpose of satisfying a need or pursuing an opportunity 48 . CS refers to a system formed by the SoI and the set of systems with which the SoI directly interacts 48 ; such systems are often referred to as external systems to the SoI. I conceive the SoI as an open system, since it transfers information, matter, and/or energy through its boundaries to interact with external systems 48 .…”

An Assessment of the Adequacy of Common Definitions of the Concept of System

“…For example, the Context System [27] is defined as a closed system to limit systems engineering effort to those interactions between the external systems and the intervention system. Furthermore, stakeholder needs, which some consider the pinnacle of systems engineering [28], must be formulated as a state of a closed system [29], and learning capabilities of intelligent capabilities might only be effectively defined if one considers the system to be closed [30].…”

Systems Engineering for the Energy Transition: Potential Contributions and Limitations

“…They require bridging between different worldviews and research paradigms, between positivist approaches present in engineering sciences and constrained relativist approaches of value for transition thinking, policy-making, and governance [78]. However, initial efforts are visible in the field to start engaging with these challenges [79], e.g., by addressing sociotechnical systems (e.g., [77,[80][81][82][83][84]), stakeholders' goals and agency (e.g., [18,85]), complex systems and systems-of-systems (e.g., [86][87][88][89]), conceptual modelling (e.g., [90,91]), and systems thinking (e.g., [75,76,82,92]).…”

“…These are issues that are hardly addressed by traditional Systems Engineering that would rather see normativity and agency either as clients' goals and customers' needs and requirements or as contextual factors for the engineering system. In the traditional approach, normative and agency aspects are typically addressed in a rather instrumental and technocratic way, focusing on how to model or how to manage [18][19][20].…”