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LARGE SCALE REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS AS HETEROGENEOUS ENGINEERING
M
Principals
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Solution
Space S t
and legitimized. Capabilities to produce such
solutions must be acquired and maintained in the
surrounding socio-technical system. Therefore, the
solution space is intimately related to the principals,
i.e. a set of actors who have the capability to
represent themselves as capable of arriving at
solutions to an identified problem, or who possess
specific skills that can result in specific solutions.
The solutions are socially constructed also in the
sense that the principals must find solutions to fit to
their problems and thereby accept the legitimacy of a
specific solution to their specific problem. Principals
have also incentives to create their own solutions
(e.g., goals) so they can influence the social system
in which they reside and obtain resources.
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Goals
Problem
Space P t
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M N
Figure 1: Requirements Analysis Framework
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Anomaly
Space
Technologies
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Accordingly, many times solutions search for
problems and not the other way round.
Working solutions form instantiations of one or
more principals’ successful attempts to adapt generic
as well as custom technologies to suit to specific
business, or social problems. Hence, solutions
embody new and novel ways of carrying out
organizational tasks often with untried
configurations of social arrangements and technical
artifacts. Our concept of technology is thus a
heterogeneous one in the sense that it covers both
social and managerial innovations, and technical
innovations that draw upon properties and laws of
the physical world and which demand that the final
solution is a socio-technical ensemble (Law 1987).