Software Requirements Negotiation: A Review on Challenges

Requirements negotiation involves discussion on the requirements conflict to have some compromise that will satisfy the participating stakeholders of a software project. The output of a requirement negotiation is a set of satisfied requirements of two or more parties. In this paper, we present a systematic review of requirements negotiation challenges. The study adopted 34 papers from the final study selection process which were analyzed based on the requirements negotiation challenges they addressed. The identified challenges are decision-making, communication, performance, managing requirement changes, and conflict resolution. The output of the study indicates that decision-making is addressed by 33% of the studies reviewed, followed by the performance with 22%, conflict resolution with 19%, while 16% focus on stakeholders’ communication, and managing requirements changes has 10%.

CRITERIA FOR ACCEPTING SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS NEGOTIATION TOOLS IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

Requirements negotiation is a centralized process of making a decision in order to resolve conflicts in the requirements of the stakeholder. The negotiation will enable the shared vision of software to be developed among the heterogeneous stakeholder in the software industry to be achieved. Many process models used for the negotiation of stakeholder’s requirements have been proposed for the software industry by the research community, yet the acceptance of these process models is discouraging. This study tends to investigate the inadequate adoption of requirements negotiation process models. Further, it finds the acceptance criteria for the software industry to adopt requirements negotiation models. Finding shows that the software industries do not adopt the process models. The perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and many more criteria have been identified through the literature review on the general criteria of software systems acceptance.

HOW TO PACK THE LEBENSWELT INTO A BLACK BOX: ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

This paper proposes a way to de-transcendentalize the concept of the life-world (Lebenswelt), which is a phenomenological term for basic, pre-theoretical, intersubjective knowledge. The aim is to arrive at a conception that shows the decisive influence of the material background over the life-world. A critical examination of Don Ihde’s phenomenology indicates that the method of phenomenological reflection does not capture the influence of technologies in shaping the life-world and is restricted to the final stages of that shaping. The tools of science and technology studies (STS) are needed for de- transcendentalizing the concept of the life-world. Jurgen Habermas’s concept of the life-world is best suited to this task because it is quite consistent with the methodological requirements of STS and is least burdened by its phenomenological heritage. Nevertheless, some transcendentalist presuppositions are retained in the Habermas concept. These presuppositions are connected with the distinction between goal-oriented actions and communicative and strategic ones. Actor-network theory (ANT) methodology permits a reformulation of that distinction. First, the paper shows the similarity of ANT’s notion of the black box to Habermas’s concept of the life-world. Second, this paper formulates a conception for shaping the life-world which is consistent with ANT’s methodological requirements. Negotiation, which denotes the process of forming a black box by reducing the heterogeneity of multiple actors to one simple device or statement, is the key concept. In this way, the paper constructs a new theory of communication and the life-world free from the transcendentalist presuppositions that have undermined every concept of the life-world from Husserl to Habermas.