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Abstract
The development of online and Web-based systems is becoming increasingly critical to the business strategy of many organisations. Although this development can be viewed as a form of software development, it has various unique characteristics. One of the most significant is the uncertainty in domain understanding by both clients and developers. Another is the way in which Web solutions typically lead to changes in business models and hence requirements. These are manifested as significant volatility in the requirements of these systems. In this survey paper we investigate the handling of requirements for Web systems including looking at both commercial practice and current research. We report on the outcomes of a comprehensive set of interviews and follow-up surveys, and argue that the Web system requirements process needs to be fundamentally different from more conventional systems, incorporating the design process into the identification of requirements resulting in a design-driven requirements process.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the collaborative funding support from the Australian Research Council, Access Online Pty Ltd and Allette Systems Ltd under grant no. C4991-7612. In particular we wish to thank John Eklund, Ross Jeffery, Louise Scott, Lucila Carvalho and John D'Ambra for their contributions to this research project, and Brian Henderson-Sellers and Brendan Haire for the related discussions on WebOPEN and the differences between Web development and conventional software development. We also wish to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the numerous companies and individuals who participated in the industry interviews and surveys. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback, advice and suggestions of the reviewers of this paper.
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University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway 2007, NSW, Australia
David Lowe
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Lowe, D. Web system requirements: an overview.Requirements Eng8, 102–113 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-002-0153-x
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