Requirements analysis for socio-technical system design

Few methods address analysis of socio-technical system requirements. This paper describes a method for analysing dependencies between users/stakeholders agents and computer systems in the operational environment. Domain scenarios describing the system and its context are used to create an environment model. A method is proposed to define business organisational relationships by operationalising transaction cost theory to obtain an a priori view of relationships according to the market context for a client and supplier. Inter-agent dependencies are investigated to determine the coupling between agents according to type of event flows and dialogue exchanges between them. Coupling metrics are applied to assess the degree of dependencies between the system and the users. High-level requirements are suggested to deal with different types of organisational design. The method is illustrated with two case studies of a service engineer support system and an Internet travel agent. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.