What agile ERP consultants think of requirements engineering for inter-organizational ERP Systems: Insights from a Focus Group in BeNeLux

In 2006–2010, 12 practices for engineering the coordination requirements in inter-organizational Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects were identified, classified to levels of inter-organizational coordination complexity, and subjected to a preliminary evaluation. Aim: This set of practices is now the object of a broader evaluation effort, including 8 focus groups with practitioners working in various project contexts (e.g. outsourced, cloud, agile), so that we get deeper understanding about those practices that happen in certain contexts and not in others. Method: In this paper, we present the focus group research pertaining to the agile ERP project context. We analyze the coordination requirements experiences of 9 practicing ERP consultants, specialized in agile ERP exclusively, for the purpose of understanding the fit of the 12 practices with these practitioners' project realities. Results/Conclusion: Our results suggest that all 12 practices have been observed by the practitioners. However, three out of the 12 practices were associated to levels of inter-organizational coordination complexity which were different than what we thought.