Requirements Contracts: Definition, Design, and Analysis

Abstract: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a proposition to be called a requirement? In Requirements Engineering research, a proposition is a requirement if and only if specific grammatical and/or communication conditions hold. I offer an alternative, that a proposition is a requirement if and only if specific contractual, economic, and engineering relationships hold. I introduce and define the concept of "Requirements Contract" which defines these conditions. I argue that seeing requirements as propositions governed by specific types of contracts leads to new and interesting questions for the field, and relates requirements engineering to such topics as economic incentives, interest alignment, principal agent problem, and decision-making with incomplete information.