Requirements Engineering

MBIT - Lecture 1 Introduction to Requirements Engineering

Contents

Course Outline and Evaluation Criteria

Introduction to Requirements Engineering What are Requirements

Stakeholders in Requirements Engineering

Characteristics of Requirements Types of Requirements Importance of Requirements Engineering

Introduction to Requirements Engineering

The process of establishing the services that the customer requires from a system and the constraints under which it operates and is developed The entire system development process begins with requirements engineering. What vs. How Software Engineering Process

Vision Why Definition What Development How Maintenance Change

What are Requirements - IEEE

A condition or capability needed by user to solve a problem or achieve an objective. 2. A condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document. 3. A documented representation of a condition or capability as in 1 or 2.
1.

What are Requirements Jones & Sommerville

1.
2.

The statement of needs by a user that triggers the development of a program or system - Jones 1994
Requirements are ... A specification of what should be implemented. They are descriptions of how the system should behave, or of a system property or attribute. They may be a constraint on the development process of the system. - Sommerville 1997

Stakeholders in Requirements Engineering

Customer 2. User
1.
1. 2. 3. 4.

Operator Manager Executive General public

Architect 4. Developer 5. QA Engineer 6. Maintenance Engineer

3.

Characteristics of Requirements
1.
2. 3.

Clarity
Precision Completeness

4.
5. 6.

Verifiability
Realistic Traceability

Clarity and Precision

Unambiguous Same meaning for all stakeholders Appropriate representation for different stakeholders

Wireframes, Storyboards for users

DFDs, data flows, ER diagram for developers Component, system diagrams for architects

Completeness

Description of all complexities Cohesive Consistent

No conflicts or contradictions

In practice, it is very difficult to produce a complete, consistent, and cohesive requirement

Realistic and Verifiable

Requirement should be realistic

Computationally Practically Mention success scenarios as well as failure scenarios Test cases covering all logical flows

Verifiability

Verifiable through different states of system

Traceability

Forward tracing

Requirement - UI - Design - Test case

Backward tracing

Test case Design UI Requirement

Types of Requirements
1.

Functional requirements

Domain requirements Customer requirements

User requirements
Business requirements System requirements Product requirements Organizational requirements

2.

Non-functional requirements

External requirements

3.

Direct and Derived requirements

Functional Requirements

Services that system should provide Detailed system requirements Details of the functionality or services

Different types include

Domain requirements Customer requirements

User requirements
Business requirements System requirements

Non-Functional Requirements

Constraints on the system or services Constraints on development process or standards Constraints from users or external sources

Product requirements

Efficiency Performance and Memory Reliability

Portability
Usability Design and architecture

Maintainability

Non-Functional Requirements

Organizational requirements

Processes followed in the organization Delivery Implementation Standards Interoperability Ethical Legislative Safety Privacy

External requirements

Goals & Non-Functional Requirements

Some non-functional requirements are derived from goals and vision behind building the system System Goal Users should be able to learn and adapt to new system within no time Usability, User friendliness System Goal To provide 24/7 service to our customers to maintain their accounts Stability, Sustainability, Maintainability Distinction between functional and non-functional is not always very clear Non-functional requirements should be written in quantitative manner For some goals, quantitative measure is not possible i.e. maintainability

Non-Functional Requirement Measures

Property Speed Measures Transactions / second Requests /second User response time Screen refresh time Memory / RAM consumption Size of page in browser Training time Steps to perform actions Mean time to failure Probability of unavailability Rate of failures

Size Ease of use Reliability

Robustness

Fail-over mechanism Backup Restart time

Platform independence No. of targeted systems

Portability

Conflicts in Non-Functional Requirements

Conflicts in different non-functional requirements are common in complex systems Space vs efficiency Spacecraft system

Minimize weight: use less independent chips Minimize power consumption: use low power chips

Using low power chips means more independent chips

Minimizing weight is more important or minimizing power consumption?

Domain requirements

Derived from the domain of the system May be functional, non-functional, or constraints Understandability

Expressed in terms of language of the domain

Can be difficult to understand by software engineers Domain experts take these development team doesnt as implicit requirements but

Problems with natural language

Lack of clarity Confusion Amalgamation of requirements

Difficult to express complex requirements in terms of natural language

Difficult to express mathematical requirements

Lack of readability

Guidelines for writing requirements

Use standard format Use of diagrams / tables as much as possible Use language in a consistent way

Avoid using computer jargons

Importance of requirements engineering

Boehm (1981) correcting the error after development costs 68 times more than correcting it before Other studies shows it can be as high as 200 times Identifying and defining requirements in proper way is the key to reduce errors Prevention vs Removal of errors

Assignment # 1
1.
2.

Choose a software system of your own liking

Give two examples of each type of requirement that we have studied in context of selected system

3.
4.

Submission Date: Monday, 8th April, 2014

Zero tolerance for Plagiarism