Abstract
Effective Requirements Engineering is a crucial activity in software-intensive development projects. The human-centric working mode of Design Thinking is considered a powerful way to complement such activities when designing innovative systems. Research has already made great strides to illustrate the benefits of using Design Thinking for Requirements Engineering. However, it has remained mostly unclear how to actually realize a combination of both. In this chapter, we contribute an artifact-based model that integrates Design Thinking and Requirements Engineering for innovative software-intensive systems. Drawing from our research and project experiences, we suggest three strategies for tailoring and integrating Design Thinking and Requirements Engineering with complementary synergies.
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Notes
- 1.
See the IREB glossary, available at www.ireb.org
- 2.
We can often observe that RE is subsumed under the umbrella of software process models or product management approaches, often without using the term “Requirements Engineering.” In this chapter, we do not distinguish between those various approaches but refer to the handling of requirements—from their inception to their specification and validation—which is in scope of any product development regardless of the chosen approach and terminology and regardless of whether it is done explicitly or implicitly.
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See also the project website NaPiRE.org for further information and related empirical data sets.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Falk Uebernickel for his continuous support and feedback in previous articles and research efforts that provided a major influence on our findings presented in this book chapter. We further thank Manfred Broy and Walter Brenner for stimulating discussions and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.
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Appendix
Appendix
Artifact Description
The following appendix defines the content model of the combined artifact model in detail giving for each content item a definition of the used concepts.
The Number (#) references the assigned number within the artifact model.
The Name captures the name and the type of the artifact. If the artifact can be attributed to both Design Thinking (DT) and Requirements Engineering (RE), different descriptions for both approaches (e.g., Design Challenge and Project Scope) are marked by a slash (/). In this case, the description for the Design Thinking-related artifact is provided first and the Requirements Engineering expression second.
Description and Purpose denotes the content and main characteristics of each artifact type. Interdependencies summarize the relationships between the artifacts regarding their content within the artifact model. The description differentiates between the input that artifacts receive from the content of other artifacts (‘input from’) and the output that they provide for other artifacts in the artifact model (‘input for’).
The Notation suggests appropriate documentation and specification techniques for each artifact (e.g., natural language, Unified Modelling Language (UML) class diagrams, model-based documentation).
Context Specification
A description of the content items of the context specification is provided in Table 5.
Requirements Specification
A description of the content items of the requirements specification is provided in Table 6.
System Specification
A description of the content items of the system specification is provided in Table 7.
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Hehn, J., Mendez, D. (2022). Combining Design Thinking and Software Requirements Engineering to Create Human-Centered Software-Intensive Systems. In: Hehn, J., Mendez, D., Brenner, W., Broy, M. (eds) Design Thinking for Software Engineering. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90594-1_2
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