Before a software project is officially started, there is a stage that has not received much consideration in the requirements engineering literature: the precontract or bidding stage. Part of a bid is a cost estimate that should be as precise as possible. During the bidding stage, bidders are not being paid while competing with each other, i.e., they have to work under great pressure of time, success and cost. As the costs of common requirements engineering (RE) methods are often considered to be too high, these methods are typically not used at this early stage. This workshop aims at discussing and elaborating new ideas to improve RE in this stage.
The goal of this workshop was to discuss the aforementioned and other relevant questions that help us to understand what is necessary from a requirements engineering perspective to prepare a solid and reliable proposal, without the time to do a “complete” requirements analysis. To support the requirements engineers or sales persons, we discussed ideas and possible solutions on a (tool-based) RE methodology for the more effective and efficient creation of bid proposals. The workshop aimed at discussing the following questions:
What are the central requirements engineering problems when preparing a bid? How can we handle lacking IT affinity of the decision makers? How can we present software projects in a way that is understandable for decision makers? How can we use common procedure models to resolve specific challenges of requirement analyses during the precontract phase? Can we apply common methods of requirement engineering in the precontract phase, or are they just to complex and cost intensive? Can we find innovative methods that are able to come to reliable cost estimate before a detailed requirements analysis is possible? What are constraints of current tools supporting the bid proposal management? How can we minimize risks to write imprecise and wrong calculated proposals? How can we show effects of changes in the complexity of software projects? Can we find best practices in the communication about the requirements with our stakeholders? How can we validate the requirements in the dialog with our stakeholders? How can we reduce the time that has to be invested in a valid proposal? 3
Workshop Agenda