Umm AL-Qura University
College of Engineering and
Computing at Al-Qunfudhah
Computing Department
Software Engineering
(SE3037)
Chapter 2: Requirement
Process
Objectives
• To describe the principal requirements engineering activities and their
relationships
• To describe requirements validation and the role of requirements
reviews
• To discuss the role of requirements management in support of other
requirements engineering processes
Requirements Processes
• The requirements themselves are the descriptions of the system
services and constraints that are generated during the requirements
engineering process.
• The processes used for requirements engineering vary widely
depending on the application domain, the people involved and the
organization developing the requirements.
• The goal of this stage of the software engineering process is to help
create and maintain a System Requirements Document.
Requirements Engineering
Processes
• The software requirements document is the official statement of
what is required of the system developers.
• Should include both a definition of user requirements and a
specification of the system requirements.
• It is NOT a design document.
• As far as possible, it should set of WHAT the system should do rather than
HOW it should do it.
Requirements Engineering
Processes
• The processes used for RE vary widely depending on the application
domain, the people involved and the organization developing the
requirements.
• However, there are a number of generic activities common to all processes:
1. Requirements elicitation;
• What services do the end-users require of the system?
2. Requirements analysis;
• How do we classify, priorities and negotiate requirements?
3. Requirements validation;
• Does the proposed system do what the users require?
4. Requirements management.
• How do we manage the (sometimes inevitable) changes to the requirements document?
The Requirements Engineering
Process
Require ments
Feasibility elicitation and
study
analy sis
Require ments
specification
Feasibility Require ments
report validation
System
models
User and system
requirements
Require ments
document
Requirements Engineering
Requirements
specification
System requirements
specification and
modeling
User requirements
specification
Business requirements
specification
System
requirements Feasibility
User study
elicitation requirements
elicitation
Prototyping
Requirements
elicitation Requirements
Reviews
validation
Syst
em requirements
document
Example
Patient records system
(Elicitation) 1. Talk to patients, doctors, nurses, receptionists, managers to find out
Current system practise, legal restrictions DPA, problems with current system, needs for
improvement, security issues, costs
(Elicitation) 2. Develop draft documentation and review what is most important,
what will it cost, what is the timescale, is new hardware required
(Validation) 3. Send requirements to end users. Present them with Q&A. Go back
to step 1, discuss requirements again
(Management) 4. Have a yearly review of requirements between all stakeholders. Have
a system of reviewing the cost and feasibility of change to system
9
Feasibility Studies
• A feasibility study decides whether or not the proposed system is
worthwhile
• A short-focused study that checks
• If the system contributes to organizational objectives
• If the system can be engineered using current technology and within budget
• If the system can be integrated with other systems that are used
Feasibility Study
Implementation
• Based on information assessment (what is required), information
collection and report writing
• Questions for people in the organization
• What if the system wasn’t implemented?
• What are current process problems?
• How will the proposed system help?
• What will be the integration problems?
• Is new technology needed? What skills?
• What facilities must be supported by the proposed system?
Elicitation and Analysis
• Sometimes called requirements elicitation or requirements discovery
• Requirements elicitation and analysis is iterative involving domain
understanding, requirements collection, classification, structuring,
prioritization and validation.
• Involves technical staff working with customers to find out about the
application domain, the services that the system should provide and the
system’s operational constraints
• May involve end-users, managers, engineers involved in maintenance,
domain experts, trade unions, etc. These are called stakeholders
Problems of Requirements
Analysis
• Stakeholders don’t know what they really want.
• Stakeholders express requirements in their own terms.
• Different stakeholders may have conflicting requirements
• Example, staff easy of use, management highest security
• Patients change appointments easily, management plan staff resourcing,
reduce costs
• Organizational and political factors may influence the system
requirements (Data protection)
• The requirements change during the analysis process. New
stakeholders may emerge and the business environment change.
Requirements Validation
• Concerned with demonstrating that the requirements define the
system that the customer really wants
• Requirements error costs are high, so validation is very important
• Fixing a requirements error after delivery may cost up to 100 times the cost of
fixing an implementation error
Requirements Checking
• Validity. Does the system provide the functions which best support the
customer’s needs?
• Consistency. Are there any requirements conflicts?
• Completeness. Are all functions required by the customer included?
• Realism. Can the requirements be implemented given available budget and
technology
• Verifiability. Can the requirements be checked?
Requirements Validation
Techniques
• Requirements reviews
• Systematic manual analysis of the requirements
• Prototyping
• Using an executable model of the system to check requirements.
• Test-case generation
• Developing tests for requirements to check testability
• Automated consistency analysis
• Checking the consistency of a structured requirements description
Requirements Reviews
• Regular reviews should be held while the requirements definition is
being formulated.
• Both client and contractor staff should be involved in reviews.
• Reviews may be formal (with completed documents) or informal.
Good communications between developers, customers and users can
resolve problems at an early stage.
Requirements Management
• Requirements management is the process of managing changing
requirements during the requirements engineering process and
system development.
• Requirements are inevitably incomplete and inconsistent
• New requirements emerge during the process as business needs change and
a better understanding of the system is developed;
• Different viewpoints have different requirements, and these are often
contradictory.
Requirements Change
• The priority of requirements from different viewpoints changes during
the development process.
• System customers may specify requirements from a business
perspective that conflict with end-user requirements.
• The business and technical environment of the system changes during
its development.
Requirements Evolution
Initial Changed
understanding understanding
of problem of problem
Initial Changed
require ments require ments
Time
Enduring and Volatile
Requirements
• Enduring requirements. Stable requirements derived from the core
activity of the customer organization.
• E.g., a hospital will always have doctors, nurses, etc. May be derived from
domain models
• Volatile requirements. Requirements which change during
development or when the system is in use. In a hospital, requirements
derived from health-care policy
Requirements Management
Planning
• During the requirements engineering process, you have to plan:
• Requirements identification
• How requirements are individually identified;
• A change management process
• The process followed when analyzing a requirements change;
• Traceability policies
• The amount of information about requirements relationships that is maintained;
• CASE tool support
• The tool support required to help manage requirements change;
Requirements Change
Management
• Should apply to all proposed changes to the requirements.
• Principal stages:
• Problem analysis.
• Discuss requirements problem and propose change;
• Change analysis and costing.
• Assess effects of change on other requirements;
• Change implementation.
• Modify requirements document and other documents to reflect change
Change Management
Identified Revised
problem Problem analysis and Change analysis Change requirements
change specification and costing implementation