Page 175 - Software and Systems Requirements Engineering in Practice

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C C h a p t e r 5 : Q Q u a l i t y A t t r i b u t e R e q u i r e m e n t s 141 141
The term “stakeholder” may have any of three meanings,
depending on context
• Stakeholder class A group, category, or type of individual
with a certain set of concerns.
• Individual stakeholder A particular, named person who is
a member of one or more stakeholder classes. You might need
to engage several individuals from the same class.
• Stakeholder representative An individual selected to
represent a stakeholder class for the purposes of a project. In
some cases, a stakeholder representative is not a member of
the class he or she represents but is chosen as a proxy for
them because, for one reason or another, no member of the
class can be made available to represent them.
Identifying Potential Stakeholders
It is very important for you to brainstorm a list of potentially important
stakeholders before settling on which ones you will actually engage,
because if you miss a significant stakeholder, you are likely to miss a
significant requirement.
Your project will undoubtedly present you with several obvious
individual stakeholders. Some additional sources that can help
identify significant stakeholders are
• The problem definition This should tell you why the
project is important, which will give you clues as to whom it
is important to.
• Other projects and departments in your organization Other
departments may, for example, provide field support to the
product you are developing, giving them a stake in it.
• Checklists There are several good published lists of
potential stakeholder classes, including those from the
Software Engineering Institute [Clements et al. 2003] and the
Atlantic Systems Guild.
• Use-case context diagram In Chapter 4, you learned how to
identify use case categories top-down and breadth-first. The
top-level use case diagram identifies all the types of actors
that interact with the system you are building. Each type of
actor suggests a stakeholder class. Tip: If the use case context
diagram hasn’t been created yet, offer to help draft it.
• Quality attributes As you consider potentially important
quality attributes, ask the question “important to whom?”
This will sometimes uncover new stakeholder classes worth
considering.