New RE Dimensions for Digital Ecosystems - Initial Results from an Expert Interview Study

Requirements engineering (RE) for digital ecosystems, i.e., systems with contributions by different players on a common technical platform, is a challenging task. The complexity of the ecosystems and the heterogeneity of the players imply the need to consider a multitude of dimensions when eliciting and analyzing requirements for the platform. This applies to the creation of new digital ecosystems, where players with services and data are on boarded on newly established platforms, as well as to the evolution of existing ecosystems. Since these RE-relevant dimensions have not been investigated systematically yet, we performed an interview series with practitioners and scientists working on actual digital ecosystems. We collected a set of 61 information needs, i.e., aspects that are relevant when making decisions on requirements. This set served as the foundation for the construction of a digital ecosystem meta-model. In this meta-model, we structured the identified dimensions such that in future work we can derive a methodology for the performance of requirements elicitation and analysis for digital ecosystems.