Requirements Engineering Flashcards

Flashcards covering the key concepts in Requirements Engineering, including definitions, principles, and types of requirements.

Requirements Engineering (RE)

Systematic and disciplined approach to the specification and management of requirements with the goal of understanding the stakeholders’ desires and needs and minimizing the risk of delivering a system that does not meet these desires and needs

Value of Requirements Engineering

Reducing the risk of developing the wrong system, better understanding of the problem, basis for estimating development effort and cost, prerequisite for testing the system

Symptoms of Inadequate RE

Missing, unclear, incorrect requirements due to rushing, communication problems, assumptions, and inadequate RE education

System Requirements

What a system shall do

Stakeholder Requirements

What stakeholders want from their perspective

User Requirements

What users want from their perspective

Domain Requirements

Required domain properties

Business Requirements

Business goals, objectives, and needs of an organization

Major tasks of RE

Elicitation, Documentation, Validation and Negotiation, Requirements Management

Requirements Engineer Role

Elicit, document, validate and/or manage requirements as part of their duties.

Analytical Thinking

An important characteristic for requirements engineers.

Empathy

An important characteristic for requirements engineers.

Ability to Communicate

An important characteristic for requirements engineers.

Fundamental Principles of RE

A set of principles that govern all tasks, activities, and practices in Requirements Engineering.

Value Orientation (Principle 1)

Requirements are a means to an end, not an end in itself. Value = Benefit - Cost.

Stakeholders (Principle 2)

RE is about satisfying the stakeholders’ desires and needs.

Shared Understanding (Principle 3)

Successful systems development is impossible without a common basis.

Context (Principle 4)

Systems cannot be understood in isolation; consider the system's environment.

Problem, Requirement, Solution (Principle 5)

These are intertwined; solutions address problems based on requirements.

Validation (Principle 6)

Non-validated requirements are useless; confirm they match stakeholder needs.

Evolution (Principle 7)

Changing requirements are normal; expect and manage this.

Innovation (Principle 8)

More of the same is not enough; strive for innovative solutions.

Systematic and Disciplined Work (Principle 9)

RE needs to be performed in a systematic way, regardless of the process used.

Functional Requirements

Requirements concerning a result/behavior to provide by a function of the system. Examples include use cases, business rules, data, and error handling.

Quality Requirements

Requirements that pertain to a quality concern not covered by a functional requirement; how well a system behaves (performance, security, reliability, usability).

Constraint Requirements

Requirements that limits the solution space beyond what is necessary for meeting functional and quality requirements. Considerations of organizational and technical limitations.