Value based requirements creation for electronic commerce applications
Jaap Gordijn, Hans Akkermans, Hans J. van der Vliet · 2005
Electronic commerce applications have special features compared to conventional information systems. First, because electronic commerce usually involves yet nonexisting business activities, requirements for e-commerce applications have to be created from scratch rather than elicited. Second, design decisions about e-business models and the associated information systems architecture cannot be sequentially made in a decoupled way, because business and technology considerations are strongly linked. On these counts, current methodology for requirements engineering is inadequate for electronic commerce applications. We outline a structured approach to e-commerce requirements creation. This e/sup 3/-VALUE approach enables one to clarify business model decisions to be made by management, by modelling the end-to-end value activities and exchanges in the e-commerce stakeholder network. In addition, this value network model enables system developers to derive high-level requirements concerning the software architecture.