Migrating towards co-operative requirements engineering

Systems development has moved from treating systems as purely technical problems, towards seeing systems as parts of the users´ environment. Stakeholders such as operators are increasingly involved in requirements engineering in particular. Requirements engineering is balanced between cooperating with the stakeholders who own the requirements, and the need for a controlled process of development. The dilemma is that control and predefined methods tend to exclude co-operation. The article assesses progress towards the possibly unreachable goal of fully co-operative requirements engineering. Some leading methods are compared. The potential for co-operative inquiry to resolve the dilemma of co-operating manageably is discussed.