Improving Requirements Analysis through Business Process Modelling: A Participative Approach

Although requirements analysis is acknowledged as a critical success factor of information system development for organizations, mistakes are frequent at the requirements stage. Two of these mistakes are the lack of understanding of the business by requirements engineers and the miscommunication between business people and systems analysts. As a result of these problems, information systems may not fulfill organizational needs. To prevent these problems, this paper describes an approach based on business process modeling. The business environment is modeled in the form of BPMN diagrams. The diagrams are validated by end-users and are then analyzed by systems analysts in order to reach an agreement on the effect that the information system will have on the organization. Finally, requirements are specified by means of the description of the business process tasks to be supported by the information system.

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