Contemporary Challenges in Requirements Discovery and Validation: Two Case Studies in Complex Environments - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 59

5.13 Summary of Challenges
Table 1 provides a summary of the challenges observed in the two cases. It is
interesting to observe that many of the pressing challenges in the projects relate
to the complexity that the design teams encountered, most notably in the diversity
of inputs, difficulties in prioritization, and defining interactions. This observation
underscores the perception of increased RE complexity [ 21] . This fundamental chal-
lenge is perhaps most concisely articulated by one of the respondents: “Our biggest
challenge probably is the complexity of any new thing we want to do - they tend to
get bigger and bigger.”
6 Discussion
The analysis offers a number of key insights regarding the impediments to current
RE processes. It also suggests that the systemic model helps effectively character-
ize many of the most pressing issues in systems development teams. Of the twelve
core challenges we outlined [ 21] , eleven are represented in various forms in the
two project contexts studied. In addition, the cases underscore the fundamental
interactions between these challenges.
6.1 The Systemic Character of RE Challenges
In both projects, the within-class interactions of various challenges are readily
apparent. This is not surprising, as the classification reflects the conceptual affinity
(shared variance) of these challenges. Within the category of cognitive challenges,
the inability of users to articulate their needs contributes to, and is augmented by,
their lack of reflectiveness and motivation in discerning the informational demands
of their business environment and the difficulty they experience in envisioning alter-
native future states (i.e., paradigmatic constraints ). While all of these cognitive
limitations are intertwined, a couple of relationships are particularly salient. First,
the articulation challenges originating from tacit knowledge clearly contribute to the
lack of reflectiveness/motivation of the business professionals. Because rendering
tacit knowledge in an explicit form is difficult, users avoid such an exercise unless
they can be certain that it is worth the effort. Secondly, the difficulty of making
one's needs explicit ( articulation challenges ) necessarily limits the degree to which
those needs can be integrated into emerging paradigms of information management
( paradigmatic constraints ). In the same way, the absence of a clear vision for how a
future state might be created contributes to the inability of users to describe clearly
their demands for functionality.
Likewise, in the realm of social challenges, each challenge contributes to the
others. For example, the assumption of an adversarial nature in the Business-IT