Abstract:
Both the research literature and commercial practice is increasingly acknowledging that Web systems
development has unique characteristics, primarily reflecting specific elements of the systems being
developed. One of the most significant of these differences is the way in which an understanding of client
needs is developed and the systems are specified. Specifically, commercial practice tends to adopt an
iterative process that carries out the initial specification by exploring with the client potential solutions
(using techniques such as white sites). This serves a dual purpose of improving clients' understanding of
their own needs as well as beginning the design process. The result is a specification that starts as a set of
acceptance criteria and initially evolves into an architectural specification that captures client requirements,
and then develops into a build specification (often embedded into the actual built system).
In this paper we present a model of these system characteristics, and show how they evolve over the
lifetime of a project. This model is based on data collected from a series of interviews and surveys of
commercial developers, as well as the analysis of commercial specifications. We show how this model can
be used as the basis for guiding the development process, indicating the inter-relationships between the
various emerging characteristics.
