RE Communities
The activities, issues and methods of Requirements Engineering are practis ed across many different communities, although the terminology might not always be the familiar “requirements analysis”, “specification”, etc. RE’07 wishes to encourage submissions from the diversity to requirements communities in order to exchange experiences on how the domain influences practice and academic investigation. Examples of communities where requirements are a key concern include:
Systems Engineering
Large- scale systems such as design of ships, aircraft and power plants, integrated manufacture, transportation, air traffic control, healthcare systems, etc. are all characterised by complexity, long development time- scales and uncertainty, since complex systems are socio- technical by nature. People are involved as individual operators, managers, maintainers, so system- level requirements concern people as well as hardware and software. INCOSE is a collaborating society with RE’07, recognising our shared interest in systems requirements engineering.
Business Information Systems
These systems are also complex and socio- technical in nature, so they share many requirements concerns with the system engineering community. The main difference is the greater focus on information processing, management and business. In academic circles, the research community of Information Systems addresses the requirements problems of technology- fit into organisations, technology acceptance, and technology- empowered transformation of business processes. RE’07 wishes to encourage submissions from IS researchers and practitioners.
Product Management
RE has encouraged research on requirements for Product Lines, Reusable Components and ERPs (Enterprise Resource Plans) for a number of years. The community of Product Managers shares many issues with S ystems E ngineers (e.g. automotive applications) and business information systems, although the focus tends to be on development, evolution and management of complex products over long time- scales. RE’07 welcome submissions from product managers, especially in the industrial community.
Design and Human Computer Interaction
HCI and Designers also practis e requirements engineering, although the approach tends to be more scenario- based, iterative prototyping. Designers widen the ambit of RE to highlight aesthetics and user engagement as requirements issues. Submissions from the commercial design community as well as the academic HCI & Design community are welcome.
Software Engineers
Requirements E ngineering is often viewed as a sub- discipline of software engineering so submissions from this community should require no additional encouragement. However, many software engineers are not aware of requirements as an issue, even though it is a key part of software engineering models, processes and tools. ACM SigSoft is a collaborating society for RE’07 in recognition of our close ties with software engineering.
The above list of communities is not exhaustive; if you are concerned with the process of designing and developing software, systems, products and making them fit for- purpose, then the RE’07 conference is relevant to you. We want to encourage diversity in our debates, so please submit your papers, views, panels to the conference.