Requirements engineering for cross-organizational ERP implementation undocumented assumptions and potential mismatches

A key issue in requirements engineering (RE) for enterprise resource planning (ERP) in a cross-organizational context is how to find a match between the ERP application modules and requirements for business coordination. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing coordination requirements in inter-organizational ERP projects from a coordination theory perspective. It considers the undocumented assumptions for coordination that may have significant implications for ERP adopting organizations. In addition, we build a library of existing coordination mechanisms supported by modern ERP systems, and use it to make a proposal for how to improve the match between ERP implementations and supported business coordination processes. We discuss the implications of our framework for practicing requirements engineers. Our framework and library are based on a literature survey and the experience with ERP implementation of one of us (Daneva). We further validate and refine our framework.