The structure of ill structured problems

Reviews of the state of the professional practice in Requirements Engineering stress that the RE process is both complex and hard to describe, and suggest there is a significant difference between competent and "approved" practice.

Abstract

The boundary between well structured and ill structured problems is vague, fluid and not susceptible to formalization. Any problem solving process will appear ill structured if the problem solver is a serial machine that has access to a very large long-term memory of potentially relevant information, and/or access to a very large external memory that provides information about the actual real-world consequences of problem-solving actions. There is no reason to suppose that new and hitherto unknown concepts or techniques are needed to enable artificial intelligence systems to operate successfully in domains that have these characteristics.