What is Variation Point

Literature mainly focuses the adaptation of any requirements engineering process on the possible variations of elicitation techniques, mainly due to information sources characteristics. However, these particularities, usually called situational factors, are seldom considered in other activities of the requirements process. Most situational factors, when considered in software projects, have a high influence on the requirements process. Therefore, the different situations that may attempt against or may favor a successful requirements process should be identified at the beginning of the project. Additionally, some of such factors may evolve along software development life cycle; this should motivate a reengineering of the requirements process at some strategic milestones. In this chapter, a process for constructing and dynamically adapting a requirements process is proposed, focusing on the evolving factors. The process follows rules based on different combinations of situational factors at specific control points and manages a repository of process blocks to perform the tailoring.