Modelling the Political Context in Requirements Engineering. The System is made for Man, not Man for the System

Abstract: This paper describes the authors point of view on reaching a stage at which it is necessary to understand customer organizations better to identify their problems and how to address them. To resolve this issue we need a mechanism to capture and model how that organization actually operates by mapping organizations against the system to be developed, by including power and politics in their "too human" and even emotional dimension. We then describe here a notation by which to recognize and document power, politics and the emotional aspects of software requirements-related decision-making in customer organizations. We conclude by outlining that our suggested graphical notation would maybe not solve the problem: but even if it just raises awareness, this would make us closer to solving the problem. Given the sensibility of the political issue, it is assumed that the generated diagram using the above mentioned notations is only for the requirements engineer and his/her team, thus remaining strictly private.