CSEB274/

3443
Requirements
Engineering
UNIVERSITI TENAGA
NASIONAL
MODULE 1.0
Introduction and Foundations
Why do you need to learn this
subject?
1. Certification https://www.ireb.org/en/cpre
2. Final year project documentation
3. Career / industry
1.1 Introduction

• The impact of requirements engineering on successful and customer-oriented

systems development can no longer be ignored.
• Why perform requirements engineering ?
 The number of projects that exceeded time or budget constraints significantly
end/did not meet customer satisfaction drop from 53% to 46% [Chaos 2006]
 How the requirements of a system are handled is a significant cause for project
failures and/or time and budget overruns.
 Introduction

• 1.1.1 Figures and facts from ordinary

projects
• Requirements engineering as a cause of
errors
 Approximately 60% of all errors in system
development projects originated during the phase
of requirements engineering [Boehm 1981].
 Introduction

• 1.1.1 Figures and facts from ordinary projects

• Requirements engineering as a cause of errors
 Missing requirements often remain undetected during design and
realization because developers trust the requirements engineer to
deliver high-quality work.
 Unclear, incomplete or wrong requirements certainly lead to the
development of a system that does not possess critical properties or
possesses property that were not requested.
 Introduction

• 1.1.1 Figures and facts from ordinary projects

• Cost of errors during requirements engineering
 The later in the development project a defect in the requirements is
corrected, the higher cost associated with fixing it.
 The effort to fix a requirements defect is up to 20 times higher if
correction is done during programming as opposed to fixing the
same effect during requirements engineering.
 If the defect is fixed during acceptance testing, the effort involved
may be up to 100 times higher [Boehm 1981].
Introduction

• 1.1.1 Figures and facts from ordinary projects

• Symptoms and causes of deficiency requirements engineering
 Requirements are missing or not clearly formulated. The requirements do
not reflect customer wishes precisely or the requirements are described in
an imprecise way and thus allow for several interpretations.
 Misconception of the stakeholders that much is self-evident not need to be
stated explicitly.
Introduction

• 1.1.1 Figures and facts from ordinary projects

• The significance of good requirements
engineering
 Complete requirements free from defects are the
basis for successful system development.
 Fault and gaps in requirement documents must be
discovered early on to avoid tedious change
processes.
Introduction

• 1.1.2 Requirements Engineering- What is It?

• Definition 1-1: Requirement
 A condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective
 A condition or compatibility that must be met or possessed by a system or system
component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification or other formally imposed
documents.
 A documented representation of a condition or capability as in (1) or (2).

[IEEE 610.12-1990]
Introduction

• 1.1.2 Requirements Engineering- What is It?

• Definition 1-2: Stakeholder
 Stakeholder of a system is a person or an organization that has an (direct or indirect)
influence on the requirements of the system.
Introduction
• Stakeholders are those people organization's that have some impact on the
requirements.
• This could be people:
 that are going to interact with the systems (e.g: users or administrators),
 people that have a new interest in the system but are not likely to use it (e.g:
management, a hacker from which the system must be protected, stakeholders of
competing systems)
 legal entities, institutions, because these are embodied by living people who may
choose to influence or define the requirements of the system.
Introduction
• Goals of requirements engineering
 Requirements engineering must elicit the stakeholders’
requirements document, document the requirements in a
suitable manner, validate and verify the requirements, and
manage requirements over the course of the entire lifecycle of
the system [Pohl 1996].
Introduction
Definition 1-3: Requirements Engineering
 Requirements engineering is a systematic and disciplined approach to the specification
and management of requirements with the following goals:
(1.1) Knowing the relevant requirements, achieving a consensus among stakeholders about
these requirements, documenting them according to given standards, and managing them
systematically.
(1.2) Understanding and documenting the stakeholders’ desires and needs, they specifying and
managing requirements to minimize the risk of delivering a system that does not meet the
stakeholders desires and needs
Introduction
 4 core activities of requirements engineering :
 Elicitation
 During requirements elicitation different
techniques are used to obtain requirements
from stakeholders and other sources and to
refine the requirements in great detail.
 Introduction
 Documentation
 During documentation, the elicited requirements are
described adequately. Different techniques are used to
document the requirements by using natural language or
conceptual models [Ch 4,5,6].
 Validation and negotiation
 In order to guarantee that the predefined quality criteria are
met, documented requirements must be validated and
negotiated early on [Ch 7].
Introduction
 Management
 Requirements management is orthogonal /independent to all
other activities and comprises any measures that are necessary
to structure requirements, to prepare them so that they can be
used by different roles, to maintain consistency after changes,
and ensure their implementation [Ch 8].
Introduction
 Constraints
 Different project constraints influence requirements engineering.
 For instance, people, domain factors, organisational constraints
(e.g : temporal availability of project members) have a large impact
on the choice of suitable techniques.
Embedding requirements engineering into
process models
 Requirements engineering as a self-contained phase
 Process models such Waterfall model or V-Model aim at completely
eliciting and documenting all requirements in an early project phase
before any design or realization decisions are made.
 In this process models, requirements engineering is understood to be
a finite, time-restricted initial phase of system development.
Embedding requirements engineering into
process models
 Requirements engineering as a continuous, collateral process
 Lightweight process models (eXtreme Programming) on the other
hand, only elicit necessary requirements once they are supposed to
be implemented as “foretelling” future functionalities is difficult
and requirements change over the course of the project.
 In these process models, requirements engineering is treated as a
continuous, comprehensive process that comprises and integrates all
phases of system development.
Fundamental of Communication Theory
 Language as a medium for requirement communication
 Requirements must be communicated.
 In most cases, one used a rule-driven medium that is accessible to
the communication partner- natural language.
 For the transmission of information from one individual to another
to work properly, the common code is needed.
Fundamental of Communication Theory
 Language as a medium for requirement communication
 The more similar the cultural and educational background, the
area of expertise, and every day work life, the better the
exchange of information works.
 However, this ideal conditions does not exist between
stakeholders.
 Fundamental of Communication Theory

 Therefore, it is sensible to agree

upon a common language and how
this common language is to be
used.
 This can be achieved by means of
(1) glossaries and (2) formal
descriptive languages such as
UML.
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer

 Central role
 The requirements engineer as a project role is often
at the center of attention.
 She is usually the only one who has direct contact
with the stakeholders and has both the ability and the
responsibility to become as familiar as possible with
the domain.
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Central role
 She is the one that identifies the
needs underlying the stakeholder
statements and translate the
requirements to the architects
and developers
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Seven necessary capabilities of a requirements engineer:
1. Analytic thinking
 Must be able to become familiar with domains
 Analyze complicated problems
2. Empathy
 Good intuition
 Empathy for people
 Identify problems that might arise
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Seven necessary capabilities of a requirements
engineer:
3. Communication skills
 To elicit requirements
 To interpret requirements
 Communicate with stakeholders
 Listen, ask the right questions at the right time
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Seven necessary capabilities of a
requirements engineer:
4. Conflict resolution skills
 Cause of conflicts; different opinions of
different stakeholders
 Must identify conflicts
 Mediate between parties involved
 Apply suitable techniques to resolve
conflicts
Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Seven necessary capabilities of a requirements engineer:
5. Moderation skills
 Mediate between different opinions and lead discussions.
 Can hold individual and group conversations
6. Self-confidence
 Shall be exposed to criticism as well
 Needs high level self-confidence and ability to defend
herself
 Never take criticism personally
 Characteristics of a Requirements Engineer
 Seven necessary capabilities of a
requirements engineer:
6. Persuasiveness
 Able to represent the requirements in team
meeting and presentations
 Must consolidate differing opinions
 Facilitate a decision in case of disagreement
 Create consensus among the stakeholders
Requirements Types
 Overview of requirements types
 Definition 1-4: Functional Requirement
A functional requirement is a requirement concerning a result of behavior that shall be
provided by a function of the system.
 Definition 1-5: Quality Requirement
A quality requirement is a requirement that pertains to a quality concern that is not covered
by functional requirements.
 Definition 1-6: Constraint
A constraint is a requirement that limits the solution space beyond what is necessary for
meeting the given functional requirements and quality requirements.
 Requirements Types

 Functional Requirement
 Define the functionality that the system to be developed offers.
 Usually, these requirements are divided into functional
requirements, behavioral requirements, and requirements.
 Requirements Types

 Quality Requirement
 Defines desired qualities of the system to be developed and
often influence the system architecture more than functional
requirements do.
 Are about; performance, availability, dependability, scalability,
or portability of a system.
 Classified as non-functional requirements.
 Requirements Types

 Constraint
 Example; The system shall be implemented using web services,
the system shall be available on the market no later than the
second quarter of 2012.
 The differences between constraint and functional and quality
requirements; constraints are not implemented.
 They are adhered to because they merely limit the solution
space available during the development process.
1.5 Importance and Categorization of
Quality Requirements
 In daily practice, quality requirements of a system are often not documented, in
adequately documented, improperly negotiated.
 Such circumstances can threaten the project’s success or the subsequent acceptance
of the system under development.
 Therefore, the requirements engineer should place special emphasis on the quality
requirements.
 There are many different classification schemes for quality requirements have been
proposed. Some of the classification scheme; ISO/IEC 2510:2011 standard.
Importance and Categorization of
Quality Requirements
 The following categories are typical for quality requirements;
Requirements that define the:
◦ Performance of the system (response time behaviour and resource utilization)
◦ Security of the system (accountability, authenticity, confidentiality, integrity)
◦ Reliability of functionalities (availability, fault tolerance, and recoverability)
◦ Usability (accessibility, learnability, ease of use)
◦ Maintainability ( reusability, changeability, testability)
◦ Portability (adaptability, installability, replaceability)
Importance and Categorization of
Quality Requirements
 The requirements engineer is responsible for making sure the
quality requirements are as objective and verifiable as possible.
 The quality requirements need to be quantified.
 For example: A system shall process 95 percent of all queries
within 1.5 seconds and that it must not take longer than 4
seconds to process queries at any time given.
Importance and Categorization of
Quality Requirements
 Quality requirements should not be mixed with functional
requirements.
References
o Requirements Engineering Fundamentals: A Study Guide for the Certified Professional
for Requirements Engineering Exam - Foundation Level - IREB compliant

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