Capturing, negotiating, and evolving system requirements: bridging WinWin and the UML

Developing software systems is a process of eliciting and evolving stakeholder requirements using informal, semiformal and formal representations of knowledge. Managing the transitions between these representations is a challenging task. On the one hand informal representations for capturing system requirements support straightforward involvement and interaction of even inexperienced stakeholders. On the other hand this approach may result in inconsistent, incomplete, and ambiguous specifications. Semiformal and formal representations overcome these problems but are less suited for stakeholder interaction. In this paper, we describe an experiment using the WinWin model for negotiating system requirements and the Unified Modelling Language. We discuss our experiences and draw conclusions useful in bridging informal and formal representations.