A role clarity framework for gathering business activities

To date, requirement engineering (RE) studies have proposed several methods for efficiently gathering correct and complete requirements for developing information systems. As one of the most widely-used RE approaches, goal-oriented requirement engineering (GORE) determines requirements based on an organization's goals for its information system. GORE methods vary, but most do not clarify how they obtain the primary goals. To address this uncertainty, a few studies have introduced some guidelines. This researcher believes however that further investigation is required to improve organizational analysis, and thereby attain more accurate definition of goals for the information system. The first step in organizational analysis should be defining business activities of users. To achieve such understanding, this thesis develops a role clarity framework, that operationalizes the concept of role ambiguity drawn from two organizational theories: role dynamics (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, & Rosenthal, 1964) and goal setting and task performance (Locke & Latham, 1990). According to the proposed framework, a role’s expectations, activities, and consequences are essential for describing a role’s business activities. Findings reveal that a role’s activities express the core of a role’s business activities. In addition, a role’s expectations and consequences contain contextual information supporting analysts in collecting and evaluating a role’s business activities. More specifically, expectations clarify the origin of business activities, and consequences enable analysts to verify current business activities and anticipate potential ones.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat