Notes on synthesis of context between engineering and social science

Abstract

The term 'context,' in software engineering, has been typically associated to mean the act of setting boundaries and setting system scope. In this paper, we revisit the concept of 'context' and draw ideas from other areas of engineering and the social sciences to suggest that context is a much richer concept that requires a systematic approach to model all of its relative aspects. It constitutes more complex phenomena concerning how a system interacts with its surroundings or even the world. Therefore, we outline a synthesised view of context to be used as a foundation for any approach that intends to apply 'context' effectively within a process or a modelling framework for software engineering. The synthesis is identified from five combined themes for any model to use context effectively. Show more