D.Ing. (Engineering Management) / The requirements discipline is at the heart of systems engineering, software engineering and business analysis. When a solution needs to be developed, built or bought that will be useful to the users and that will achieve the intended business goals, the problem needs to be understood before a possible solution can be developed. This process of understanding the problem that needs to be solved and what the solution should achieve is referred to as the requirements process. Requirements are the input to the solution development process. If the requirements are incorrect, the developed solution will not be useful. The purpose of this study was to discover the social behaviour of practitioners that causes the communication breakdowns during the requirements engineering process. Requirements emerge from the social interaction and communication between the requirements practitioner and the various stakeholders. The main problems with the requirements engineering process are communication and coordination breakdowns, as well as the lack of domain knowledge or understanding of the problem. These challenges are all related to the social interaction during the requirements engineering process that impacts the quality of requirements. Researchers have made significant progress in the development of methodologies. Tools and techniques are available for improving the quality of requirements. However, in practice, requirements are still produced with errors which then leads to unsuccessful solutions to problems. The requirements engineering process is executed within a social context. These social elements should be taken into consideration to improve quality. Based on the results collected from real-world practice as well as people’s behaviour in the real world, a complete understanding of the influence on the requirements process was derived. This understanding was used to identify the social elements required during the requirements engineering process. A socio-technical view is provided of the social and the technical activities that should be facilitated by the requirements engineering process. This framework integrates the required communicative activities with the traditional requirements activity. This socio-technical framework for the requirements engineering process was developed based on a survey. The aim of this framework is to overcome the social behaviour that causes communication breakdowns and impacts on the quality of the requirements. The research contributes to the existing requirements knowledge base. The socio-technical framework developed for the requirements process concerns the communication breakdowns continuously highlighted as a contributing factor to poor requirements, by providing the social activities required during the requirements process as guidance. Secondly, the knowledge acquired provides adequate data on requirements practice for future research. Specific focus areas for practitioners and managers on how to improve the requirements engineering process without the adoption of any new tools or methodologies are also included in the results. Additionally, practitioners’ behaviour was determined. By determining these interaction and relationship patterns, communication can be improved and made more effective.

The support of mobile workers with mobile IT solutions can create tremendous improvements in mobile business processes of a company. The main characteristic of such a mobile system is the ability to connect via a (mobile) network to a central server, e.g. in order to access customer data. This paper presents a detailed description of the four main software architectures for mobile client/server-based systems and their main characteristics. Beyond, typical business requirements in mobile environments like the location of use, data topicality, interaction requirements, synchronisation mechanisms and many more are mapped onto each of these architectures. The presented results can be used for discussing concurrent business needs as well as for deriving a mobile system architecture based on these needs.

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This dissertation focuses on the re-use of business process reference models, available in a business process model warehouse, to enable the definition of more comprehensive business requirements. It proposes a business process model warehouse framework to promote the re-use of multiple business process reference models and the flexible visualisation of business process models. The critical success factor for such a framework is that it should contribute to minimise to some extent the causes of inadequate business requirements. The proposed framework is based on an analogy with a data warehouse framework, consisting of the following components: usage of multiple business process reference models as source models, the conceptual design of a process to extract, load and transform multiple business process reference models into a repository, a description of repository functionality for managing enterprise architecture artefacts, and motivation of flexible visualisation of business process models to ensure more comprehensive business requirements. / Computer Science (School of Computing) / M.Sc. (Information Systems)

This dissertation focuses on the re-use of business process reference models, available in a business process model warehouse, to enable the definition of more comprehensive business requirements. It proposes a business process model warehouse framework to promote the re-use of multiple business process reference models and the flexible visualisation of business process models. The critical success factor for such a framework is that it should contribute to minimise to some extent the causes of inadequate business requirements. The proposed framework is based on an analogy with a data warehouse framework, consisting of the following components: usage of multiple business process reference models as source models, the conceptual design of a process to extract, load and transform multiple business process reference models into a repository, a description of repository functionality for managing enterprise architecture artefacts, and motivation of flexible visualisation of business process models to ensure more comprehensive business requirements. / Computer Science (School of Computing) / M.Sc. (Information Systems)

Varför misslyckas statliga myndigheter så ofta med sina IT-satsningar och vad kan man göra åt detta? Att IT-investeringar som görs av våra myndigheter inte ger önskade nyttoeffekter i verksamheten, innebär en stor kostnad för samhället. Tidigare forskning visar att det är vanligt att man utvecklar IT-stöd utan att först utreda vad organisationen egentligen vill uppnå med dem. Huvudfrågan i detta examensarbete är hur man kan förbättra myndigheters IT-beställningsprocess. I en seminarieserie delar åtta personer, med sig av sina erfarenheter, genom dialogseminariemetodiken. De är alla involverade i beställningsprocessen, på olika statliga myndigheter. Vi kan, i enlighet med tidigare studier, konstatera att för att kunna grunda sina IT-beställningar på de behov som verksamheten och användarna har, så måste den som är beställare ta reda på vilka dessa behov är, redan i förarbetet till beställningen. Beställare behöver få ett ökat ansvar för att se till att detta blir gjort, och att slutresultatet faktiskt ger den verksamhetsnytta man vill åstadkomma. Ett utpekat ansvar kan ge beställaren både ökad motivation och ett starkare mandat. På myndigheterna är det traditionellt sett IT-leverantören som står för stora delar av kravframtagandet och, i den mån det förekommer, användbarhetsaktiviteter och verksamhetsanalyser. Våra resultat visar att det är svårt att ändra på detta förhållande mellan leverantör och beställare. En anledning är att IT har hög status, vilket gör att leverantören lätt får övertag över beställaren. För att myndigheters IT-satsningar ska kunna ge önskat resultat kan vi konstatera att beställarna måste stärkas i sin roll. I denna studie drar vi slutsatsen att beställarna behöver backas upp av ett tydligare och mer relevant metodstöd, ett område som inte behandlats så ingående i tidigare forskning. Vidare måste beställningsprocessen specificeras mer noggrant och ansvarsfördelningen mellan de olika parterna klargöras. Avgörande för att detta ska ske är att personer i ledande position på myndigheterna kommer till insikt om hur mycket man har att tjäna på att låta verksamhetens behov vara det som styr IT-utvecklingen. / Why do IT investments so often go wrong, and what can we do in order to achieve better results? IT investments in Government authorities are often problematic, and it is common that the resulting product of a procurement does not meet the organization's expectations in the actual usage. It has been shown that IT products are often designed without sufficient investigation of the organisations' business requirements or their users' needs. In this study, through a series of dialogue seminars, eight people from different Swedish Government authorities, who are involved in the procurement process, will share their experiences with us. The main question of this master thesis is how the procurement process at the Government authorities can be improved. If the procurer does not find out the users' and business' needs in the earliest phases of the process, the procurement can not be based on them. Traditionally at Government authorities, which is also confirmed in this study, it is often up to the IT supplier to perform usability activities. In accordance with prior research, our results show that the procurer have to be given more responsibilities for the effects that the end products has on the business. It becomes a problem that the supplier, due to the high status that comes with IT knowledge, have ascendancy over the procurer. To support the procurer in their task of formulating their procurements on basis of the organisation's needs, we can conclude that the procurer has to be given a much better support through customized methodology. A field of research that has not been dealt with so much in earlier scientific studies. And in order to change the relation between supplier and procurer, the results suggest that the authorities must clarify the responsibilities and proceedings of the procurement process.