Revisiting the Core Ontology and Problem in Requirements Engineering

In their seminal paper in the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Zave and Jackson established a core ontology for requirements engineering (RE) and used it to formulate the "requirements problem", thereby defining what it means to successfully complete RE. Given that stakeholders of the system-to-be communicate the information needed to perform RE, we show that Zave and Jackson\´s ontology is incomplete. It does not cover all types of basic concerns that the stakeholders communicate. These include beliefs, desires, intentions, and attitudes. In response, we propose a core ontology that covers these concerns and is grounded in sound conceptual foundations resting on a foundational ontology. The new core ontology for RE leads to a new formulation of the requirements problem that extends Zave and Jackson\´s formulation. We thereby establish new standards for what minimum information should be represented in RE languages and new criteria for determining whether RE has been successfully completed.