=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2991/paper03
|storemode=property
|title=Continuous Requirements Engineering for Digital Transformation
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2991/paper03.pdf
|volume=Vol-2991
|authors=Konstantinos Michailidis,Renate Strazdina,Marite Kirikova
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/bir/MichailidisSK21
}}
==Continuous Requirements Engineering for Digital Transformation==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2991/paper03.pdf
Continuous Requirements Engineering for Digital
Transformation
Konstantinos Michailidis1,2, Renate Strazdina3 [0000-0003-1943-1719] and Marite Kirikova1
[0000-0002-1678-9523]
1Institute of Applied Computer Systems, Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia
2Accenture Baltics, Latvia
3Microsoft Latvia, Latvia
konstantinos.michailidis@edu.rtu.lv,
renate.strazdina@microsoft.com, marite.kirikova@rtu.lv
Abstract. In today's world, the constant rapid changes in the technological envi-
ronment have formed a dynamic ecosystem that is forcing businesses to undergo
a digital transformation. This digital transformation causes many challenges and
opportunities for those organizations that timely recognize the changes in the en-
vironment and decide to take the next step. However, many organizations find
the whole digital transformation process very complex. The risk of the entire en-
deavor can be mitigated by implementing a digital transformation process that
serves as a guide with clear and comprehensive tasks for a successful digital
transformation. However, this process alone does not guarantee the desired re-
sults, as the undertaking needs an orchestrator to facilitate and strengthen collab-
oration, communication, and knowledge sharing throughout the process. This is
where Continuous Requirements Engineering can contribute by providing its
functionality. The goal of this work was to develop a continuous requirements
engineering supported approach that helps to handle complexity of an entire dig-
ital transformation process. The approach consists of two core components: the
digital transformation process and the requirements engineering management
component that uses the functionality of continuous requirements engineering to
support the transformation process. In the end, the continuous requirements en-
gineering approach for digital transformation was validated on a business case
described in the related work.
Keywords: Digital Transformation, Continuous Requirements Engineering.
1 Introduction
In today’s world, the constant rapid changes in the technological environment have
caused businesses to change rapidly. However, due to complex nature of the transfor-
mation process companies find it difficult to adapt and successfully meet these rapidly
evolving technological standards [1]. This lack of adaptation, and often failure to trans-
form, is causing these companies to be left behind by the competition and, as a result,
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
26
they often give up. In this exceptionally uncertain and challenging environment, the
context of digital transformation has become a central concept [2].
According to Loonam et al. [1, p. 102], “digitally enabled organizations are sup-
ported by new Information and Communication Technologies, referred to as digital
technologies, which increasingly promise enormous opportunities for growth.” At this
point, an organization should analyze its ecosystem and current state and take a step
towards digital transformation to take advantage of the opportunities that arise and thus
secure its position in the market [3]. However, the successful implementation of digital
transformation projects has many complexities that need to be overcome, such as deal-
ing with fast-moving technological innovation and restructuring departments, business
processes, and culture [4]. Fast-moving technological innovation leads to digital dis-
ruption, which is the biggest risk that can cause significant damage, from compromising
core business processes that have a high impact on the company's value chain to ex-
cluding the company's activities from the market [5]. At this point, interdepartmental
communication and collaboration play a key role in successfully implementing digital
transformation and avoiding undesirable situations.
Requirements engineering is the function that brings business, system development,
and operations to the same side [6]. However, the traditional notion of requirements
engineering provides specific functionality that does not ensure efficiency in dynamic
environments and projects such as digital transformation. The digital transformation is
a recursive project, and these iterations require additional functionality that ensures
continuity of business, collaboration, and communication [7].
Consequently, Continuous Requirements Engineering plays an important role by
providing additional functionality that supports today's dynamic organizations. It pro-
vides agility and continuous adaptation in organizational policies, strategies, and pro-
cesses that are consistent with today's extremely challenging and complex information
systems environment [7]. In this way, an organization gets the assurance that it is fol-
lowing the right path. As a result, mistakes are eliminated, costs are reduced in terms
of budget and time, and possible future needs arising from changes in the technological
or business environment are tracked.
Considering the research problem presented and the recommended solution, the fol-
lowing main research question (MRQ) is set out in this paper: How a continuous re-
quirements engineering can facilitate the digital transformation process? To answer
this question a continuous requirements engineering approach for digital transformation
(CRE4DT) is proposed. The approach is presented and discussed in Section 2, includ-
ing the references to related work which it is based upon. Section 3 tests the applicabil-
ity of the model. Section 4 provides brief conclusions and points to the directions of
further research.
2 Continuous Requirements Engineering Approach in Digital
Transformation Process
The purpose of this section is to present the CRE4DT approach that answers the main
research question presented above and provides a methodological solution to the
27
difficulty that many organizations are experiencing to successfully transform and com-
ply with the rapidly evolving ecosystem.
The CRE4DT approach, proposed here, is a hodgepodge of methods and approaches
from the literature, the amalgamation of which leverages digital transformation.
The approach is decomposed into two main parts: the core digital transformation
process and the supporting requirements engineering management model that supports
the organization through the use of continuous requirements engineering functionality.
These two main components contain several elements that are described in this section.
Fig. 1 illustrates the big picture of the CRE4DT model. Continuous requirements engi-
neering is allocated inside the requirements engineering management component; dig-
ital transformation process is divided in three main phases: business planning, system
development, and operations. The collaboration of these two components relates to the
ecosystem which resembles all organizations and systems the enterprise undergoing the
digital transformation is related to.
Fig. 1. Big picture of CRE4DT.
2.1 Proposed Digital Transformation Process Model
After thorough research in the digital transformation environment, the step-by-step
functionality of the process is explained Table 1 and Fig. 2 that describe possible se-
quences of tasks in the digital transformation process with the inputs that each of them
requires, functions performed, and expected outputs. The proposed digital transfor-
mation process provides a holistic, end-to-end process that an organization can follow
to accomplish digital transformation. Unlike most papers in the literature that focus on
individual parts of the process and analyze them in detail, the proposed digital transfor-
mation process presents an end-to-end process. The proposed sequence of steps in the
process is seen in the 2nd column of Table 1 and in Fig. 2. Each element of the table is
complemented with the reference to the related work which approves its presence in
28
the table. The functions and their sequence are proposed based on the amalgamated
experiences reported in related work about digital transformation in higher education
[8], developing strategy for digital transformation [9], handling digitalization in organ-
izational processes [4], and complexity handling in organizational networks [10]. The
functions essential in requirements engineering [6] and continuous software develop-
ment [11] also have been respected so that the digital transformation process would be
flexible enough to embrace the complexities of continuous change. Further each iden-
tified functionality has been analyzed in the context of related work to identify its inputs
and outputs as fully as possible. For instance, for function “Analyze ecosystem”, the
work on digital business models [12], conceptual modeling for value added digital
transformation [2], digital disruption regarding business and information system engi-
neering [5], and considerations about the success of digital transformation in industry
4.0 [13] have been considered. The related works, on which each item of Table 1 is
based, are reflected next to the item.
The entire proposed digital transformation process (see Table 1, middle column, and
Fig. 2) is divided into three phases. In Table 1, tasks 1-10 represent the business plan-
ning activities, Task 11 represents the system(s) development activities, and Task 12
represents the operations activities. These three phases should work holistically to
achieve continuous improvement in digital transformation. To achieve this integration
between the different phases, the supporting requirements engineering management
model (See Section 2.2) should be introduced to support collaboration and communi-
cation using the continuous requirements engineering functionality that enables seam-
less information flow between the phases.
An organization begins its digital transformation journey by first analyzing its eco-
system and its current state. These two tasks require a lot of information about the mar-
ket state and the organization's current strategy and business model. After analyzing the
ecosystem, the organization knows the opportunities and digital technologies it can lev-
erage through digital transformation, but also the challenges and the level of disruption
it should face and overcome to remain competitive. The analysis of the current state,
on the other hand, provides, as a result, the business layer of the As-Is Enterprise Ar-
chitecture model
The next step is to assess the operational backbone, examining the organization's
information systems and technology architecture. With this assessment, the organiza-
tion completes the As-Is Enterprise Architecture model, begun in the previous task, by
modeling the application and technology layers.
The process continues with the analysis and assessment of the digital maturity of the
organization, which requires as inputs the results of the previous tasks, as well as infor-
mation about the direction of leadership, organizational culture, employee skills, cus-
tomer centricity, level of automation, etc. The analysis of these factors contributes to
the assessment of the digital maturity level based on which the organization decides
whether it is capable or whether it is worth pursuing digital transformation.
As Fig. 2 illustrates, when answering the question "Is the organization ready for dig-
ital transformation?", in case of a negative answer (No), the exclusive gateway sends
the token to the task "Improve digital maturity", otherwise it sends the token to the
pathway that continues the digital transformation process. In other words, after
29
evaluating digital maturity level, the organization decides if it is ready to proceed with
the digital transformation or if it needs to take a step back to improve its digital ma-
turity.
Table 1. Digital transformation process.
Input Function/task Output
Customer needs [12] Challenges [2]
Regulations [2] 1. Analyze ecosys- Digital technologies [13]
Digital disruption [5] tem [8] Ecosystem’s digital disrup-
tion level [5]
Current strategy [8]
Current business model [8] 2. Analyze current As-Is Enterprise Architec-
state (strategy and ture model (business layer)
business model) [14]
[8]
Information systems architecture
[15] 3. Evaluate opera- As-Is Enterprise Architec-
Technology architecture [15] tional backbone ture model (Application and
[8] Technology layer) [14]
Ecosystem’s digital disruption
level [5] 4. Analyze and eval- Digital maturity level [10]
Digital technologies [13] uate digital ma-
Challenges [2] turity [10]
Leadership direction [12]
Employees’ capabilities [12]
Culture [2]
Customer experience level
(channels) [2]
Customer centricity [1]
Data-driven enterprise level
(data analytics) [12]
Level-of-automation [16]
Platform-orientation level [12]
Current digital strategy (if any)
[9]
As-Is Enterprise Architecture
model [14] 5. Build or refine Digital strategy [9]
Digital maturity level [10] digital strategy [9] Transformation objectives
Challenges [2] [17]
Digital technologies [13] To-Be Enterprise Architec-
Ecosystem’s digital disruption ture model [14]
level [5] Migration plan [14]
Digital strategy [9]
6. Model digital Digital business model
business model (value streams) [8]
[8]
30
As-Is Enterprise Architecture
model [14] 7. Analyze business IT project backlog [4]
To-Be Enterprise Architecture processes and pri-
model [14] oritize IT project
Digital strategy [9] backlog [4]
Digital business model [8]
Migration plan [14]
IT project backlog [4]
Digital technologies [13] 8. Select digital IT project backlog with ap-
technology for the propriate digital technolo-
chosen business gies [4]
process [4]
IT project backlog with appro-
priate digital technologies 9. Plan and define Stakeholders’ requirements
[4] requirements for [6]
Existing system’s information (if the system in System’s requirements [6]
any) [6] transformation [6]
Stakeholders’ needs [6]
Organization’s standards [6]
Regulations [6]
Domain’s information [6]
Stakeholders’ requirements [6]
System’s requirements [6] 10. Analyze and ne- System’s specifications [6]
gotiate require-
ments [6]
System’s specifications [6]
11. Perform Transfor- System on production [11]
mation (System
development)
[11]
Systems on production [11]
12. Monitor opera- Systems’ performance [11]
tions [11]
The positive decision leads the process to the task that the organization should build
or refine its digital strategy (if a digital strategy already exists). This task requires the
As-Is enterprise architecture (EA) model created in the previous tasks, as well as the
organization's digital maturity level, ecosystem digital disruption level, digital technol-
ogies, and market challenges. The goal of this task is to create the organization's digital
strategy, transformation objectives, To-Be EA model, and migration plan that navigates
the organization from the current state (As-Is model) to the desired future state (To-Be
model).
The next task is to create the digital business model. The output of this task is the
digital business model, which shows in a concrete way to the involved stakeholders the
value streams through which the organization creates value while optimizing its assets
and capabilities.
31
Fig. 2. Proposed generic digital transformation process.
Then, the analysis of the business processes and prioritization of the IT backlog is
done, taking into account the As-Is and To-Be EA models, the digital strategy and busi-
ness model, and the migration plan to generate the IT project backlog required to
achieve the desired future state.
This backlog, in conjunction with the digital technologies, serves as an input for the
selection of digital technologies for the chosen business process to be transformed. This
task outputs the IT project backlog with the appropriate digital technologies.
Then the organization proceeds to plan and define the requirements for the business
processes to be transformed. This task requires the IT project backlog from the previous
task as well as existing information about these systems, stakeholder needs, organiza-
tional standards and regulations, and domain knowledge to create the stakeholder and
system requirements.
With these requirements acquired, stakeholders work to analyze and negotiate to
create the system specifications needed to transform business processes. These specifi-
cations are sent to the IT transformation teams responsible for developing and deploy-
ing the system(s) to be transformed. Completion of this "Perform transformation" task
results in the deployment of the system(s) to production. Finally, these systems are part
of operations and recursive monitoring is performed.
As Fig. 2 shows, the digital transformation process pool is supported by the IT gov-
ernance which is represented as a black box for the sake of simplicity. The IT govern-
ance supports the entire digital transformation process by providing activities such as
32
risk management, strategic alignment, resource management, value delivery and per-
formance management.
2.2 Proposed Requirements Engineering Management Model
The second component of the CRE4DT is the requirements engineering management
model. In this section, this component is illustrated and briefly explained to show what
functions it provides and how the information is managed.
The main goal of this model is the reusability of requirements. Requirements should
be structured, documented, and stored in one place to make a future review and use for
reforming and updating the organization's systems easier, faster, and more effectively,
and to reduce costs in terms of time and budget. It also stores more general information
that is the results of the analysis to be used as requirements in business planning and
decision making. The model (Fig. 3) shows that requirements engineering management
is done using continuous requirements engineering functionality. This functionality
continuously supports communication and collaboration among people and various ac-
tivities in the organization. It is supposed to be based on a requirements management
tool that stores all the necessary information and requirements to continuously support
these activities. More specifically, there is a seamless flow of information that is ac-
quired, analyzed, documented, and stored in the requirements management tool. This
information and requirements respectively can be prioritized, tracked, and become
again the subject of negotiation and analysis. This documentation and storage of re-
quirements are extremely important in today's dynamic environments as they enable
reusability for timely reconfigurations and changes to systems.
In the model, three different entities can be noticed: the requirements engineering
management, the business environment, and the ecosystem. Requirements engineering
acts as a communication interface that provides its functionality to the business and
retrieves information flows that are internally analyzed, documented, prioritized,
tracked, and stored in the requirements management tool. The business environment is
conceptually divided into three blocks: Business Planning, System Development, and
Operations as for digital transformation process in Fig. 1 and Table 1. Requirements
management communicates seamlessly with these blocks acquiring domain knowledge,
key performance indicators, business strategies, business models, and system develop-
ment requirements. It stores and analyzes this knowledge to support decision making
and, as it will be explained in the following section, to support the digital transformation
process. The system development requirements elicited at this stage are further ana-
lyzed, negotiated between the right stakeholders, and are included in requirement spec-
ifications which are then inserted into the system development block. There is open and
continuous communication between the requirements engineering and the system de-
velopment block for possible changes in the requirements in the design phase, but also
in further steps of the system development. The last block of the business environment
is the operation that ensures the systems are continuously monitored to elicit require-
ments about emerging needs, improve current performance, and fix possible bugs.
33
Fig. 3. Role of requirements engineering management model.
These three blocks articulate the BizDevOps approach introduced by Fitgerald and Stol
[11] and leverage the opportunities for continuous improvement through the open com-
munication and collaboration that continuous requirements engineering brings to sup-
port all continuous activities. Continuous requirements engineering also supports the
capture of customer needs and market information that serves as input to business plan-
ning and decision making.
2.3 Continuous Requirements Engineering Approach for Digital
Transformation
The amalgamation of the digital transformation process and requirements engineering
management model explained in the previous sections, prepared the ground for the con-
stitution of the Continuous Requirements Engineering approach for digital transfor-
mation - CRE4DT. The CRE4DT approach (Fig. 4) explains how the requirements
engineering management model is implemented in the digital transformation process to
use the continuous requirements engineering functionality to streamline collaboration
and communication between the three different phases of digital transformation pro-
cess, with the main goal being the successful and efficient implementation and contin-
uous improvement of digital transformation.
The digital transformation process is divided into three main phases, indicated by
yellow, blue, and green dashed lines (Fig. 4) similarly as by block colors in Fig. 1. The
yellow color indicates the business planning, which includes all the activities related to
the analysis of the ecosystem and the current state of the organization, the modeling of
As-is and To-Be EA models, the definition of the migration plan to achieve the future
desired position (To-Be), the definition of the digital strategy and business plan, as well
as the analysis of business processes, prioritization of projects, selection of digital tech-
nologies and requirements acquisition, analysis and negotiation. The blue color shows
the development and/or refinement of the predefined system(s); and the green color
shows operations monitoring. The red dashed line, in Fig. 4, overlays the entire process
34
explaining the continuous improvements accomplished using the requirements engi-
neering management model. The purple dotted line, which covers the tasks from the
creation of the digital strategy to the development of the system(s), indicates the migra-
tion phase, the phase where the transformation activities start and go up to the point
where we reach the results of the predefined To-Be model. The whole process is also
supported by IT governance, which provides risk management, strategic alignment, re-
source management, value delivery and performance management activities.
On the other side, as shown in Fig. 4, there is the requirements engineering manage-
ment model, which seamlessly provides information flows and supports the three main
phases (business planning, system(s) development, and operations) in obtaining and
delivering information and requirements needed throughout the digital transformation
process. It also elicits information from the ecosystem about new customer needs and
market information needed for the business planning phases of the digital transfor-
mation process.
Fig. 4. Continuous Requirements Engineering approach for Digital Transformation (CRE4DT).
More specifically, requirements engineering acquires knowledge and requirements
from the business planning phases, such as strategies, models, planning requirements,
and system development requirements. This knowledge and requirements are stored
and shared whenever they are needed by the respective stakeholders to streamline the
tasks of the digital transformation process. In this way, each time the digital transfor-
mation process goes through an iteration and can start again from the beginning to en-
sure continuous improvement, the information required to analyze the ecosystem, the
35
current state of the organization, etc., is retrieved and reused, making the transformation
process faster, more cost-effective, and more accurate. This reusability of knowledge
is much more valuable when the time comes for system refinement. Stakeholder re-
quirements, system requirements, and requirements specifications are available for re-
use and analysis to understand and define the new stakeholder needs and functionality
of the system, and to be able to trace the root of the problem of the system in the con-
figuration phase more quickly and accurately.
Then, the system development phase communicates with the requirements engineer-
ing management model, which receives the requirements specification and sends any
requirements adjustments that were found out during the design phase and are necessary
for the successful development of the system.
Finally, the requirements engineering acquires information and requirements from
operations about the performance of the systems and the overall performance of the
digital transformation project through the monitoring activity.
The following points are the main advantages that the CRE4DT approach offers by
incorporating continuous requirements engineering in a digital transformation.
• Open collaboration and communication between different stakeholders at different
stages of the digital transformation process through seamless knowledge sharing.
• Knowledge and requirements needed for digital transformation are documented
and stored in one place for future reusability.
• Information acquisition from the ecosystem to understand and define the
challenges and opportunities in the environment.
• Seamless knowledge and requirements acquisition from the system development
and monitoring operations phases for rapid response to changes in the environment
and potential failures of the systems.
• Continuous improvement through rapid and cost-effective iterations of the digital
transformation process that ensures competitiveness and continuous improvement
through continuous experimentation and innovation.
3 Validation of the Continuous Requirements Engineering
Approach for Digital Transformation
The goal of this section is to validate the Continuous Requirements Engineering ap-
proach for Digital Transformation (CRE4DT) by virtually implementing it in a real case
scenario. The case study [18] under review refers to T-Systems MMS, which is an IT
service provider for digital transformation projects based in Germany. It is part of the
Deutsche Telekom Group and offers a wide range of IT solutions to its customers. The
company is very active in software development and, also, gets involved in consulting.
This case is an example of successful digital transformation. Table 2 outlines the digital
transformation process that has happened in the company and its seven tasks reported
in [18].
36
Table 2. T-Systems MMS transformation process, based on [18].
Transformation task Description
1. Collaboration model Define vision, responsibilities, roles, processes, and terminol-
ogy.
Understand the impact of DevOps on IT.
2. Integrated task Develop an integrated management system to manage the
management transformation process.
Unify processes and tools of development, testing and opera-
tions.
3. Continuous delivery Design and align process to enable continuous software deliv-
ery.
4. People empowerment Identify and implement necessary training.
Invest in people, new tools, collaboration models and innova-
tion.
5. Infrastructure Select, implement, and develop tools.
provisioning Define the infrastructure and integrated platforms that are
needed.
6. Pipeline automation Select, implement, and develop tools.
Standardize automated setup, technical testing, and delivery.
Compile, build and deploy software at any time.
7. Organizational Define organizational structures, rules, and roles.
implementation Transfer knowledge between development and operations.
The case study reported in [18] aims to describe how T-Systems MMS decided to em-
brace digital transformation and took a step towards implementing a DevOps program
that would explicitly position the company to gain a foothold in the market for innova-
tive digital services and consulting.
For each performed task reflected in Table 2, the T-Systems MMS project team con-
ducted six sequential phases: Initiation, Planning, Prototyping, Piloting, Roll-out, and
Review to ensure the correctness of each transformation task. In the end, a committee
decided if the process is ready to move on to the next task. This development, imple-
mentation, and evaluation of each task were done in agile sprints (six consecutive
phases) [18].
The validation of the CRE4DT approach was done as follows. First, the CRE4DT
approach was (successfully) applied in the reported business scenario [18]. Second, the
correspondence between the business case transformation process shown in Table 2
[18] and the proposed CRE4DT approach was analyzed. It was identified that all tasks
of the business case transformation process reported in [18] can be aligned with the
tasks and components of the CRE4DT approach. In addition, it was revealed that the
CRE4DT approach describes in more detail the steps that a company interested in dig-
ital transformation should follow to perform a successful digital transformation. This is
illustrated in Fig. 5. Pink circles with numbers indicate here which transformation tasks
from Table 2 correspond to which CRE4DT elements. The number “0|” depicts the
tasks which were not reported to be performed in [18].
37
Fig. 5. T-Systems MMS Transformation process compared to CRE4DT approach.
4 Conclusion
The CRE4DT approach answers the research question by showing how continuous re-
quirements engineering can facilitates digital transformation. More specifically, the ap-
proach suggests:
• A clear and comprehensive digital transformation process model that works as a
guideline in digital transformation.
• Open collaboration and communication between different stakeholders at different
phases of the digital transformation process through seamless knowledge sharing.
• Knowledge and requirements documentation for future reusability.
• Continuous interaction with the ecosystem for acquisition of challenges and
opportunities of the environment regarding new customer needs.
• Continuous tracking of development and operations phases for rapid responses to
changes in the environment and potential incompliant performance of the systems.
• Continuous improvement through iterations of the digital transformation process
that ensures the company’s continuous improvement.
As already mentioned in the functionality of the proposed CRE4DT approach, it can
be used as a guide for end-to-end digital transformation, providing a comprehensive
38
step-by-step process. In this way, the organization knows the structure of the digital
transformation process from the beginning and has the overall picture of the steps that
need to be taken. In addition, the approach embraces an attitude of continuity and open-
ness to change. However, it is clearly up to the organization how it develops this atti-
tude. IT Governance is a supporting component of the model that provides additional
activities to the process by supporting it on an ongoing basis. One of these activities is
resource management, which is responsible for allocating all types of resources to the
project as well as defining the various employees' roles required for the project. In ad-
dition, resource management, in cooperation with risk management, can prevent unde-
sirable situations, such as problems with the profitability of the organization during the
project.
Challenges regarding technology are addressed through open communication and
collaboration between different departments and stakeholders in the organization, as
well as communication with the ecosystem to obtain information, such as digital tech-
nologies involved in the specific market. In addition, a thorough analysis of the opera-
tional backbone and a careful definition of the digital strategy are part of the CRE4DT
approach. Through these tasks, the organization understands its technical debt and cre-
ates the migration plan it must follow to achieve the desired state.
CRE4DT approach uses the requirements engineering management component to
communicate with and receive information from the ecosystem. In this way, early de-
tection of ecosystem digital disruptions and changes in customer needs is achieved,
providing the organization with timely information about its environment. This contin-
uous communication also provides knowledge about new regulations in the field. Fi-
nally, cyber-attacks can be prevented through continuous monitoring and testing of op-
erations and continuous improvement of the operational backbone.
The presented research is associated with some limitations regarding the practical
implementation of the model. The model has been validated in the context of a business
case that has already occurred and not in a real-time implementation. Therefore, further
research directions could be suggested as follows:
• Implementation of the model in real-time scenario.
• Defining requirements for supporting continuous requirements engineering tool.
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