Chapter 4 - Requirements Engineering

Flashcards for reviewing key vocabulary and concepts in Requirements Engineering.

Requirements Engineering

The process of establishing the services that a customer requires from a system and the constraints under which it operates and is developed.

System Requirements

Descriptions of the system services and constraints generated during the requirements engineering process.

User Requirements

Statements in natural language plus diagrams of the services the system provides and its operational constraints, written for customers.

System Requirements

A structured document setting out detailed descriptions of the system’s functions, services, and operational constraints; defines what should be implemented and may be part of a contract.

System Stakeholders

Any person or organization who is affected by the system in some way and so has a legitimate interest.

Functional Requirements

Statements of services the system should provide, how the system should react to particular inputs, and how the system should behave in particular situations.

Non-Functional Requirements

Constraints on the services or functions offered by the system such as timing constraints, constraints on the development process, standards, etc.

Domain Requirements

Constraints on the system from the domain of operation.

Requirements Completeness (in RE)

Requirements should include descriptions of all facilities required.

Requirements Consistency (in RE)

There should be no conflicts or contradictions in the descriptions of the system facilities.

Requirements Elicitation

Working with customers and stakeholders to find out about the application domain, the services that the system should provide, and the system’s operational constraints.

Requirements Classification and Organization

Grouping related requirements and organizing them into coherent clusters.

Requirements Prioritization and Negotiation

Prioritizing requirements and resolving requirements conflicts.

Requirements Specification

Documenting requirements and inputting them into the next round of the spiral (in the spiral model of RE).

Ethnography

A social science technique where a researcher spends time observing and analyzing how people actually work.

Scenarios

Real-life examples of how a system can be used; descriptions of how a system may be used for a particular task.

Requirements Specification

The process of writing down the user and system requirements in a requirements document.

Natural Language Specification

Requirements written as natural language sentences supplemented by diagrams and tables.

Structured Specifications

An approach to writing requirements where the freedom of the requirements writer is limited and requirements are written in a standard way.

Requirements Validation

Demonstrating that the requirements define the system that the customer really wants.

Requirements Reviews

Systematic manual analysis of the requirements.

Requirements Management

The process of managing changing requirements during the requirements engineering process and system development.

Traceability Policies

Traceability policies define the relationships between each requirement and between the requirements and the system design that should be recorded.