A Task-oriented Requirements Engineering Method for Personal Decision Support Systems - A Case Study

[Context and motivation] Personal Decision Support Systems (PDSSs) are information systems which support executives in decision-making by a decisionand user-specific data presentation. PDSSs operate on current data with predefined queries and provide a rich user interface (UI). Thus, a Requirements Engineering (RE) method for PDSSs should support the elicitation and specification of detailed requirements for specific decisions. However, existing RE approaches for decision support systems typically focus on ad-hoc decisions in the area of data warehouses. [Question/problem] Task-oriented RE (TORE) emphasizes a comprehensive RE specification which covers stakeholders’ tasks, data, system functions, interactions, and UI. TORE allows an early UI prototyping which is crucial for PDSS. Therefore, we want to explore TORE’s suitability for PDSSs. [Principal ideas/results] According to the Design Science methodology, we assess TORE for its suitability of PDSS specification in a problem investigation. We propose decision-specific adjustments of TORE (DsTORE), which we evaluate in a case study. [Contribution] The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the suitability of the task-oriented RE method TORE for the specification of a PDSS is investigated as problem investigation. Second, a decision-specific extension of TORE is proposed as the DsTORE-method in order to identify and specify details of decisions to be supported by a PDSS. DsTORE is evaluated in a case study. Third, experiences from the study and method design are presented.

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