Contemporary Challenges in Requirements Discovery and Validation: Two Case Studies in Complex Environments - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 40

to focus primarily on the first category by emphasizing the limits on the human
short termmemory and simplifications of information needs resulting from bounded
rationality. The idea of cognitive limitations was later taken up by Loucopoulos and
Karakostas [ 29] , but now with an emphasis on users. They identify a host of imped-
iments relating to the users' cognitive abilities: lack of a clear idea of what a new
system should do, difficulty in articulating domain knowledge, and resentment of
change (see also, Woolgar [ 56] ). They consequently recognize a broad range of
problems resulting from these limitation including the indeterminacy of require-
ments, the dynamic nature of the RE process, and the difficulty of identifying and
integrating heterogeneous knowledge.
Several scholars have pursued the idea that social interactions form another sig-
nificant source of requirement challenges. Impediments based on communication
breakdowns and intergroup conflict are a natural byproduct of the inherently social
nature of requirements activities (e.g., [ 13, 19] ). While user participation has been
widely advocated as a central element in a successful requirements endeavor, it may
engender substantial challenges including: (1) animosity between analysts and users
[ 31, 50] , (2) the lack of interest or access to knowledgeable users [ 13] , and (3)
the increased diversity of user inputs creating conflicting requirements (e.g., [ 6, 18,
38, 53] ). The social challenges of RE are acerbated further when information sys-
tem development efforts correspond with broader business process change within
an organization. The marriage of business process change and information sys-
tems development and the impediments that this pairing implies has been addressed
by several RE researchers, most notably in a series of studies by Rolland and her
colleagues [ 15, 40, 46] .
2.2 A Systemic Model of Requirements Challenges
We recently conducted a field study to identify challenges IT managers experi-
ence in managing requirements associated with large development efforts [ 21] .
Consequently, we proposed a framework for identifying and analyzing requirements
challenges (Fig. 1) . We briefly summarize its key features and implications for RE
practice. The model identifies three broad categories of RE related impediments:
(1) cognitive challenges ,(2) interpersonal challenges , and (3) complexity chal-
lenges . 1 To some degree, these are consistent with those identified by Davis [ 10] ,
but at the same time they reflect a number of novel challenges emanating from the
changed landscape of contemporary RE. We also observed, unlike Davis [ 10] that
these challenges are highly interactive and create systemic effects on the RE process.
We will next briefly outline each challenge category and the specific impediments
that they incorporate.
1 This classification structure was determined through grounded theory coding of the data, rather
than on an a priori schema.