Understanding the initial requirements definition in early design phases
Year: 2019
Editor: Wartzack, Sandro; Schleich, Benjamin; Gon
Author: Song, Young-Woo; Herzog, Michael; Bender, Beate
Series: ICED
Institution: Ruhr-Universit
Section: Systems Engineering
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.382
ISSN: 2220-4342
Abstract
The definition of initial requirements in the early phase of product development is characterised as a decision process under highest uncertainties. Studies show that projects often deviate from their planned goals or even fail due to ill-defined requirements. Despite the importance and criticality of this task, a detailed description and risk-oriented explanation is missing in the product development literature. The goal of this paper is to develop an explanation model/frame which establishes a link between the development context and an appropriate procedure for the initial requirements definition based on general risk treatment strategies. In a first step, risk-driving context factors with high influence on this task are identified. Then two case studies are compared to analyse the interrelations between their context factors and the applied risk treatment strategies that are implemented in their procedures for defining initial requirements.
Keywords: Requirements, Early design phases, Risk management, Case study