Requirements engineering (RE) literature acknowledges the importance of early stakeholder identification. The sources of requirements are many and also constantly changing as the market and business constantly change. Identifying and consulting all stakeholders on the market is impractical; thus many companies utilize indirect data sources, e.g. documents and representatives of larger groups of stakeholders. However, companies often collect irrelevant data or develop their products based on the sub-optimal information sources that may lead to missing market opportunities. We propose a collaborative method for identification and selection of data sources. The method consists of four steps and aims to build consensus between different perspectives in an organization. We demonstrate the use of the method with three industrial case studies. We have presented and statically validated the method to support prioritization of stakeholders for MDRE. Our results show that the method can support the identification and selection of data sources in three ways: (1) by providing systematic steps to identify and prioritize data sources for RE, (2) by highlighting and resolving discrepancies between different perspectives in an organization, and (3) by analyzing the underlying rationale for using certain data sources.

翻译：需求工程（RE）文献已确认早期利益相关者识别的重要性。需求来源众多且随市场与业务持续变动而不断变化。在市场中识别并咨询所有利益相关者并不现实，因此许多企业采用间接数据来源，例如文档及大型利益相关者群体的代表。然而，企业常收集无关数据或基于次优信息源开发产品，这可能导致错失市场机遇。我们提出一种用于数据来源识别与选择的协作式方法。该方法包含四个步骤，旨在构建组织内不同视角间的共识。通过三个工业案例研究展示了该方法的应用。我们对该方法进行了展示与静态验证，以支持MDRE中利益相关者的优先级排序。结果表明，该方法可通过三种方式支持数据来源的识别与选择：（1）提供系统化步骤以识别并优先排序RE数据来源；（2）凸显并解决组织内不同视角间的分歧；（3）分析采用特定数据源的潜在理由。