Adding a systemic view to the requirements engineering processes

Requirements Engineering (RE) can be seen as a real challenge for human intelligence and ability to manage what we know, what other people know, and what nobody knows. To cope with this challenge, a good way to proceed is to adopt a systemic view, where all the factors involved (information, problems, stakeholders, notations, etc.) may be handled, whilst being as aware as possible of their connections, links, implications and obviously of their meaning. An approach derived from the SHEL model (Software, Hardware, Environment, Live-ware) of Edwards has been discussed in order to introduce and support such a systemic view and to propose a model. It is argued that this model can facilitate management of the RE process by managing the lack of knowledge which characterises many RE activities. We have also prototyped a tool to manage typical processes involving the sharing of what is known and detection of gaps in knowledge, mainly based on the paradigm of distributed cognition.