Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering

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This book presents a novel perspective on requirements engineering, emphasizing social concepts and the strategic analysis of relationships among social actors. A significant challenge in developing information technology systems that meet user needs is defining system requirements. The author introduces a new approach that focuses on modeling and analyzing stakeholder relationships. While the system-environment relationship is acknowledged in requirements engineering, existing modeling techniques often depict it in mechanistic terms. The book introduces the i* framework, which views software-based systems as situated within environments where social actors interact through goals, tasks, and resources. Social perspectives on computing have contributed valuable insights, and the i* framework aims to provide a modeling approach that integrates these social relationships into an engineering method. This method offers systematic techniques and tools that connect seamlessly to the broader system development process, including design and implementation. The book features Eric Yu's original proposal for the i* framework, alongside research that applies, adapts, extends, or evaluates these social modeling concepts and approaches.