The Role of Stakeholders in Requirements Elicitation

Abstract. The requirements definition process begins with the elicitation of stakeholder requirements, the first step of which is to identify the stakeholders from whom those requirements are to be gathered. It is common in requirements engineering to define a stakeholder as someone who has a stake in the project—that is, someone who is affected by the system in some way, or can affect the system in some way. In most systems, this definition is not useful since, regardless of where the system boundary is set, it is often difficult to find someone who is not affected by the system. While we must take into account anyone or anything that is affected by, or that can affect, the system when considering requirements, such entities are not automatically (nor necessarily) stakeholders. This paper proposes that a more useful definition of a stakeholder is someone who has a right to influence the system. A method for selecting stakeholders is proposed, and a simple example is provided to illustrate the process.