Requirements Engineering for Sociotechnical Systems

The so called information society is being shaped by products and services that either contain software as the core element, are themselves software, or have been designed and manufactured with the help of sophisticated software applications. The new global environment in which these systems are being developed and deployed, in addition to other pressing issues, such as time-to-market and dependability, are pushing the skills of software developers and engineers to the limit. With few exceptions, those products and services will influence the social environment where they will be deployed, because people will operate them or be affected by them, or both. So another challenging issue is the ability of these systems to integrate with their social environment in a way that is perceived as beneficial, trustworthy and acceptable. Given these challenges, defining the requirements that establish what a future system should do, and validating that the system has achieved its goals, is an immense task. In this book the reader will find a detailed account of the challenges posed by the elicitation, specification, validation and management of requirements for the definition of this kind of application: from embedded software in cars to internet-based applications, COTS packages, health-care, and others.

Dr. Luis Maté is Full Professor of computer sciences and artificial intelligence at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and is, at present, Viceprovost of the University. He has also served as Dean of his School of Computer Science. He received his Telecommunications Engineer degree and the PhD from the UPM. His work on information system design is one of his most prominent activities, an area on which he advises several Spanish and international institutions, including the upper and lower houses of the Spanish Parliament. He was a designated member for the Spanish Government in the Spanish Commission for the Y2K. He is author of several books and papers related to the integration of software and knowledge engineering and in the field of learning environments.

Dr. Andrés Silva is Lecturer of Software Engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), where he is responsible for teaching Requirements Engineering. He has three years of industrial experience in software development and has worked at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. In 2001 he received his PhD on Computer Science from the UPM. His research interests are Requirements Engineering and Knowledge Management. He is author of several conference and journal papers in requirements engineering.