Leveraging semantic data Wikis for distributed requirements elicitation

Abstract

Using Wikis for the collaborative creation of structured textual content has gained increasing importance in the past decade. As Wikis facilitate the involvement of large user groups to create content in an easy way, their application in large, spatially distributed software development efforts seems to be very promising. In this context, we present a classification of Wiki-based approaches to Requirements Engineering (RE) and discuss their suitability. Next, we introduce the ontology of an approach that aims at supporting the collaboration of stakeholders with regard to the RE process. This approach enables large stakeholder groups to elicit, semantically structure and classify requirements in the very early and creative RE phases. Instead of leveraging text-based Wikis, the approach is based on our semantic data Wiki OntoWiki, which focuses on the structuring and management of fine-grained data by employing Semantic Web technologies. OntoWiki enables the intuitive authoring of Knowledge Bases and facilitates the application of Knowledge Management methods.