Unravelling Organisational Rule Systems in Requirements Engineering

Abstract: Context and motivation: Requirements engineering of complex IT systems needs to manage the many, and often vague and conflicting, organisational rules that exist in the context of a modern enterprise. At the same time, IT systems affect the organisation, essentially setting new rules on how the organisation should work. Question/problem: Gathering requirements for an IT system involves understanding the complex rules that govern an organisation. The research question is: How can the holistic properties of organisational rules be conceptualised? Principal ideas/results: This paper introduces the concept of organisational rule systems that may be used to describe complex organisational rules. The concept and its components are presented as a conceptual framework, which in turn is condensed into a conceptual framework diagram. The framework is grounded in a critical literature review. Contribution: The conceptual framework will, as a first step of a wider research agenda, help requirements engineers understand the influence of organisational rules.