Chapter 4

Requirement Engineering
1. Introduction
 Requirement engineering
 The most critical step of the entire SDLC
 Changes can be made easily in this stage
 Most (>50%) system failures are due to problems with
requirements

 Iterative processes are effective because:

 Small batches of requirements can be identified and implemented
incrementally
 The system will evolve over time

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
2. Requirement Engineering
 Purpose: to convert high level business requirements (from
the system request) into detailed software requirements that
can be used as inputs for creating models
 What is a requirement?
 A statement of what the system must do or a characteristic it must
have
 Will later evolve into a design (a technical description of how the
system will be implemented)
 Types:
 Functional: relates to a process or data
 Non-functional: e.g. performance or usability

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sample Requirements
 Functional requirements
User shall be able to register
Admin shall be able to delete accounts
Parent shall be able to print Student progress report

 Non-functional requirements
System shall run on Linux
System shall interoperate with Edugate
System shall be able to handle up to 100 Ktps
User shall be able to complete operations within no more than 5
mouse clicks
System shall be available 99.9% of the time

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 3. Nonfunctional Requirements
 Operational  Cultural influence
 Technical environment  Language differences (keyboard
 System integration requirements)
 Portability  Legal implications
 Maintainability  Laws & government regulations
 Performance  Global presence requires
scrutiny of local laws
 Speed
 Capacity
 Availability & reliability
 Security
 Access control
 Encryption & authentication
PowerPoint
VirusPresentation
controlfor Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Operational Requirements

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Performance Requirements

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Security Requirements

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cultural Requirements

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Requirement Engineering Process

 Requirement elicitation (gathering, determining)

 Requirement analysis
 Requirement specification (definition)

 This process is concurrent, iterative, and incremental

 Business & IT personnel need to collaborate

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
4. Requirement Elicitation
 Process is used to:
 Uncover all requirements (those uncovered late in the process
are more difficult to incorporate)
 Which technique(s) to use?
 Interviews
 Joint Application Development (JAD)
 Questionnaires
 Document analysis
 Observation

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Interviews
 Most popular technique—if you need to know something,
just ask
 Process:
 Select people to interview & create a schedule
 Design interview questions (Open-ended, closed-ended,
probing types of questions)
 Prepare for the interview (Unstructured vs. structured
interview organized in a logical order)
 Conduct the interview (Top-down vs. bottom-up)
 Follow-up after the interview

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Question Types

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Interviewing Strategies

Top-down

How
High-level: can order
Very general processing be
improved?

Medium-level: How can we reduce the

Moderately specific number of times that customers
return ordered items?

Low-level: How can we reduce the number of

Very specific errors in order processing (e.g., shipping
the wrong products)? Bottom-up

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Post-Interview
 Prepare notes and send to the interviewee for verification

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Joint Application Development (JAD)
 Joint user-analyst meeting
 Meetings can be held electronically and anonymously
 Reduces problems in group settings
 Can be held remotely
 Sessions require careful planning to be successful
 Users may need to bring documents or user manuals
 Ground rules should be established

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Questionnaires
 A set of written questions used to obtain information
from individuals
 May be paper based or electronic (e.g., web based)
 Common uses:
 Large numbers of people
 Need both information and opinions
 Can use outside the organization (customers, vendors, etc.)
 Typical response rates: < 50% (paper); < 30% (Web)

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Questionnaire Steps
 Select the participants
 Identify the population
 Use representative samples for large populations
 Designing the questionnaire
 Careful question selection
 Remove ambiguities
 Administering the questionnaire
 Working to get good response rate
 Offer an incentive (e.g., a free pen)
 Questionnaire follow-up
 May send results to participants
 May send a thank-you

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Good Questionnaire Design
 Begin with non-threatening and interesting questions
 Group items into logically coherent sections
 No important items at the very end
 Do not crowd a page with too many items
 Avoid abbreviations
 Avoid biased or suggestive items or terms
 Number questions to avoid confusion
 Pretest to identify confusing questions
 Provide anonymity to respondents

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Document Analysis

 Provides information about the “as-is” system

 Review technical documents when available
 Review typical user documents:
 Forms
 Reports
 Policy manuals

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Observation
 Users/managers often don’t remember everything they do
 Checks validity of information gathered in other ways
 Try not to interrupt or influence workers
 Be careful not to ignore periodic activities (weekly, monthly,
annually)

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Requirement Elicitation Techniques
Compared
 A combination of techniques may be used
 Document analysis & observation require little training;
JAD sessions can be very challenging

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Alternative Techniques
 Concept Maps
 Represent meaningful relationships between concepts
 Focus individuals on a small number of key ideas
 User Stories, Story Cards & Task Lists
 Associated with agile development methods
 Very low tech, high touch, easily updatable, and very portable
 Captured using story cards (index cards)
 Capture both functional and nonfunctional requirements.

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Story Cards & Task Lists
 Capture requirement using story cards (index cards)
 File card with single requirement
 Each requirement (card) is discussed
 How much effort is required to implement it
 A task list is created for each requirement (story)
 Large requirements can be split into smaller sections
 The story can be prioritized by risk level and importance

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
5. Requirement Analysis

Problems in requirement elicitation:

 Analyst may not have access to the correct users
 Requirement content:
 ambiguity,
 contradiction,
 incompleteness,
 incompatibility

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
6. The System Proposal
 Combines all material created in planning & analysis
 Included sections:
 Executive summary
 Provides all critical information is summary form
 Helps busy executives determine which sections they need to read
in more detail
 The system request
 The workplan
 The feasibility analysis
 The requirement definition
 Current models of the system (expected to evolve)

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
System Proposal Template

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Discussion

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Write some FRs and NFRs for the following software
projects:
 Edugate
 Website of Saudi Airlines
 Microsoft Excel
 Autonomous car embedded software

PowerPoint Presentation for Dennis, Wixom, & Tegarden Systems Analysis and Design with UML, 5th Edition
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.