Improving the Quality of Requirements in Middleware Requirements Specifications

The importance of middleware in the success of IT and enterprise systems cannot be over emphasized. Digital Transformation is increasing this importance exponentially. Despite such importance, the topic of requirements engineering in middleware has limited attention in the literature. The authors have observed in their experience that the challenges faced during the requirements elicitation for middleware projects result in poor Quality of Requirements (QoR). It is thus important to understand the characteristics, nature, structure and process of middleware requirements as well as these challenges better to be able to improve the QoR. Based on the issues faced due to unavailability of adequate data and people's time in many middleware projects in over twenty five years, the authors and their organization have developed and leveraged successfully a structured methodology to elicit and document the requirements for middleware with high quality by working around the limitations faced in such projects.