THE DRY AND THE WET

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between formal, context insensitive information, and informal, situated information, in the context of Requirements Engineering; these opposite but complementary aspects of information are called "the dry" and "the wet." Formal information occurs in the syntactic representations used in computer-based systems. Informal situated information arises in social interaction, for example, between users and managers, as well as in their interactions with systems analysts. Thus. Requirements Engineering has a strong practical need to reconcile the dry and the wet.