Utilizing Rule Deviations in IT Ecosystems for Implicit Requirements Elicitation

IT ecosystems are ultralargescale software systems that consist of various, constantly interacting and partly autonomous subsystems as well as the users of the overall system. Because of their strong integration with everyday life, these systems are often not even perceived as IT systems by its users. This is a problem for requirements engineering, as users might not know of or may not be interested in the capabilities of the system at all. This hinders the ongoing development of the system and might prevent new kinds of utilization and new business models from being realized. By introducing rules into the infrastructure of IT ecosystems that are being monitored for adherence by agents interacting in the system, deviations from these rules can be harnessed for finding potential candidates for new or changed requirements. The deviations can be processed using techniques like data mining and pattern recognition and then forwarded to requirements engineers for review. They may then leverage these implicitly expressed requirements to identify actual changes in the needs of the users of the systems, enabling further advancements of the IT ecosystem.