The roots of Linde’s homecare business—and with it, the industry-specific applications in use—reach as far back as 30 years. We will show observations and raise questions for the Requirements Engineering discipline based on examples from a practical industry project in Linde’s Europe-wide homecare business.

Challenges of RE in Practice

Do we need a discipline of “Applied Requirements Engineering” vs. “Requirements Engineering”?

Looking at challenges of: - Initiating and funding projects - We need to know what it will cost before the project can be approved vs. we need to design the solution before we can say what it will cost. - Staffing of projects and available skills (with respect to Requirements Engineering)

Not on a Green Field

Many methodologies and theoretical approaches to RE typically assume a “green field” project. In practice, you may be faced with rather “lifecycle management” type of initiatives which require: - Understanding of the existing solution and the constraints it may pose - Consideration of paths for migration, change, and upgrade

One Process - Many Players

Special challenges of “who is the customer” for healthcare applications: - Patients - Patient’s significant others - Doctors - Insurance companies - Back-office users - Field technicians - Delivery drivers

How to understand and design for their very different needs?

Is There a Lack of Research?

• How to best reflect variations of different organizations, processes, legislation, and regulations in requirements and design?
• Do we have artifacts in RE to represent them?
• How to find the “best” abstraction level?
• How practical Requirements Engineering can actually influence not just software but even the design of a national health system

Andy Beck is Senior IT Manager for Digital Design, Innovation and Strategy at Linde Gas in Region Europe West. As a true digital native and a kid of the Commodore 64 age, he started to analyse requirements and to implement them in an agile manner as a teenager in the healthcare sector. Later he backed up his intuitive skills with a Diploma in Information Science and applied them in a professional carrier as programmer, designer, architect, requirements analyst and project manager. He keeps wondering which Digital Design skills and abilities can actually be learned, and which ones are rather required in order to learn.