CS 425 October 11, 2011

Chapter 4 – Requirements Engineering

Ian Sommerville,
Software Engineering, 9th Edition
Pearson Education, Addison-Wesley

Note: These are a modified version of Ch 4 slides available from the

author’s site http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ifs/Books/SE9/

Chapter 4 Requirements engineering 1

Topics covered

 The software requirements specification document

(SRS)
 Requirements specification
 Requirements engineering processes
 Requirements elicitation and analysis
 Requirements validation
 Requirements management

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The software requirements document

 The software requirements document(sometimes called

the software requirements specification or SRS) is the
official statement of what the system developers should
implement.
 Can include both a definition of user requirements and a
specification of the system requirements.
 Should set WHAT the system should do rather than HOW
it should do it.

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Requirements and design

 In principle, requirements should state what the system

should do and the design should describe how it does
this.
 In practice, requirements and design are inseparable
 A system architecture may be designed to structure the
requirements;
 The system may inter-operate with other systems that generate
design requirements;
 The use of a specific design may be a domain requirement.
Agile methods and requirements

 Many agile methods argue that producing a

requirements document is a waste of time as
requirements change so quickly
 The document is therefore always out of date
 Methods such as XP use incremental requirements
engineering and express requirements as ‘user stories’
(discussed in Chapter 3).
 This is practical for business systems but problematic for
systems that require a lot of pre-delivery analysis (e.g.
critical systems) or systems developed by several teams

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Users of a requirements document

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The structure of a requirements document

Chapter Description
Preface This should define the expected readership of the document and describe
its version history, including a rationale for the creation of a new version
and a summary of the changes made in each version.
Introduction This should describe the need for the system. It should briefly describe the
system’s functions and explain how it will work with other systems. It
should also describe how the system fits into the overall business or
strategic objectives of the organization commissioning the software.
Glossary This should define the technical terms used in the document. You should
not make assumptions about the experience or expertise of the reader.
User requirements Here, you describe the services provided for the user. The nonfunctional
definition system requirements should also be described in this section. This
description may use natural language, diagrams, or other notations that are
understandable to customers. Product and process standards that must be
followed should be specified.
System architecture This chapter should present a high-level overview of the anticipated system
architecture, showing the distribution of functions across system modules.
Architectural components that are reused should be highlighted.

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The structure of a requirements document

Chapter Description
System This should describe the functional and nonfunctional requirements in more detail.
requirements If necessary, further detail may also be added to the nonfunctional requirements.
specification Interfaces to other systems may be defined.
System models This might include graphical system models showing the relationships between
the system components and the system and its environment. Examples of
possible models are object models, data-flow models, or semantic data models.

System evolution This should describe the fundamental assumptions on which the system is based,
and any anticipated changes due to hardware evolution, changing user needs,
and so on. This section is useful for system designers as it may help them avoid
design decisions that would constrain likely future changes to the system.

Appendices These should provide detailed, specific information that is related to the
application being developed; for example, hardware and database descriptions.
Hardware requirements define the minimal and optimal configurations for the
system. Database requirements define the logical organization of the data used
by the system and the relationships between data.
Index Several indexes to the document may be included. As well as a normal alphabetic
index, there may be an index of diagrams, an index of functions, and so on.

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Requirements specification

 The process of writing down the user and system

requirements in a requirements document
 User requirements have to be understandable by end-
users and customers who do not have a technical
background
 System requirements are more detailed requirements
and may include more technical information
 The requirements may be part of a contract for the
system development
 It is therefore important that these are as complete as possible

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Ways of writing a system requirements
specification

Notation Description
Natural language The requirements are written using numbered sentences in natural language.
Each sentence should express one requirement.

Structured natural The requirements are written in natural language on a standard form or
language template. Each field provides information about an aspect of the
requirement.
Design description This approach uses a language like a programming language, but with more
languages abstract features to specify the requirements by defining an operational
model of the system. This approach is now rarely used although it can be
useful for interface specifications.
Graphical notations Graphical models, supplemented by text annotations, are used to define the
functional requirements for the system; UML use case and sequence
diagrams are commonly used.
Mathematical These notations are based on mathematical concepts such as finite-state
specifications machines or sets. Although these unambiguous specifications can reduce
the ambiguity in a requirements document, most customers don’t understand
a formal specification.

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Natural language specification

 Requirements are written as natural language sentences

supplemented by diagrams and tables.
 Used for writing requirements because it is expressive,
intuitive and universal. This means that the requirements
can be understood by users and customers.

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Guidelines for writing requirements

 Create a standard format and use it for all requirements.

 Use language in a consistent way. Use shall for
mandatory requirements, should for desirable
requirements.
 Use text highlighting to identify key parts of the
requirement.
 Avoid the use of computer jargon.
 Include an explanation (rationale) of why a requirement
is necessary.
Problems with natural language

 Lack of clarity
 Precision is difficult without making the document difficult to
read.
 Requirements confusion
 Functional and non-functional requirements tend to be mixed-up.
 Requirements amalgamation
 Several different requirements may be expressed together.
Example requirements for the insulin pump
software system

3.2 The system shall measure the blood sugar and deliver
insulin, if required, every 10 minutes. (Changes in blood sugar
are relatively slow so more frequent measurement is
unnecessary; less frequent measurement could lead to
unnecessarily high sugar levels.)

3.6 The system shall run a self-test routine every minute with
the conditions to be tested and the associated actions defined
in Table 1. (A self-test routine can discover hardware and
software problems and alert the user to the fact the normal
operation may be impossible.)

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Structured specifications

 An approach to writing requirements where the freedom

of the requirements writer is limited and requirements
are written in a standard way.
 This works well for some types of requirements e.g.
requirements for embedded control system but is
sometimes too rigid for writing business system
requirements.

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Form-based specifications

 Definition of the function or entity.

 Description of inputs and where they come from.
 Description of outputs and where they go to.
 Information about the information needed for the
computation and other entities used.
 Description of the action to be taken.
 Pre and post conditions (if appropriate).
 The side effects (if any) of the function.
A structured specification of a requirement for
an insulin pump

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A structured specification of a requirement for
an insulin pump

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Tabular specification

 Used to supplement natural language

 Particularly useful when you have to define a number of
possible alternative courses of action
 For example, the insulin pump systems bases its
computations on the rate of change of blood sugar level
and the tabular specification explains how to calculate
the insulin requirement for different scenarios
Tabular specification of computation for an
insulin pump

Condition Action

Sugar level falling (r2 < r1) CompDose = 0

Sugar level stable (r2 = r1) CompDose = 0

Sugar level increasing and rate of CompDose = 0

increase decreasing
((r2 – r1) < (r1 – r0))
Sugar level increasing and rate of CompDose =
increase stable or increasing round ((r2 – r1)/4)
((r2 – r1) ≥ (r1 – r0)) If rounded result = 0 then
CompDose =
MinimumDose

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Requirements engineering processes

 The processes used for RE vary widely depending on

the application domain, the people involved and the
organisation developing the requirements.
 However, there are a number of generic activities
common to all processes
 Requirements elicitation;
 Requirements analysis;
 Requirements validation;
 Requirements management.
 In practice, RE is an iterative activity in which these
processes are interleaved.

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A spiral view of the requirements engineering
process

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Requirements elicitation and analysis

 Sometimes called requirements elicitation or

requirements discovery.
 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.

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Requirements elicitation and analysis

 Software engineers work with a range of system

stakeholders to find out about the application domain,
the services that the system should provide, the required
system performance, hardware constraints, other
systems, etc.
 Stages include:
 Requirements discovery,
 Requirements classification and organization,
 Requirements prioritization and negotiation,
 Requirements specification.

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The requirements elicitation and analysis
process

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Process activities

 Requirements discovery
 Interacting with stakeholders to discover their requirements.
Domain requirements are also discovered at this stage.
 Requirements classification and organization
 Groups related requirements and organizes them into coherent
clusters.
 Prioritization and negotiation
 Prioritizing requirements and resolving requirements conflicts.
 Requirements specification
 Requirements are documented and input into the next round of
the spiral.
Problems of requirements elicitation

 Stakeholders don’t know what they really want.

 Stakeholders express requirements in their own terms.
 Different stakeholders may have conflicting
requirements.
 Organisational and political factors may influence the
system requirements.
 The requirements change during the analysis process.
New stakeholders may emerge and the business
environment change.
Requirements discovery

 The process of gathering information about the required

and existing systems and distilling the user and system
requirements from this information.
 Interaction is with system stakeholders from managers to
external regulators.
 Systems normally have a range of stakeholders.

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Stakeholders in the MHC-PMS

 Patients whose information is recorded in the system.

 Doctors who are responsible for assessing and treating
patients.
 Nurses who coordinate the consultations with doctors
and administer some treatments.
 Medical receptionists who manage patients’
appointments.
 IT staff who are responsible for installing and maintaining
the system.

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Stakeholders in the MHC-PMS

 A medical ethics manager who must ensure that the

system meets current ethical guidelines for patient care.
 Health care managers who obtain management
information from the system.
 Medical records staff who are responsible for ensuring
that system information can be maintained and
preserved, and that record keeping procedures have
been properly implemented.

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Interviewing

 Formal or informal interviews with stakeholders are part

of most RE processes.
 Types of interview
 Closed interviews based on pre-determined list of questions
 Open interviews where various issues are explored with
stakeholders.
 Effective interviewing
 Be open-minded, avoid pre-conceived ideas about the
requirements and are willing to listen to stakeholders.
 Prompt the interviewee to get discussions going using a
springboard question, a requirements proposal, or by working
together on a prototype system.
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Interviews in practice

 Normally a mix of closed and open-ended interviewing.

 Interviews are good for getting an overall understanding
of what stakeholders do and how they might interact with
the system.
 Interviews are not good for understanding domain
requirements
 Requirements engineers cannot understand specific domain
terminology;
 Some domain knowledge is so familiar that people find it hard to
articulate or think that it isn’t worth articulating.
Scenarios

 Scenarios are real-life examples of how a system can be

used.
 They should include
 A description of the starting situation;
 A description of the normal flow of events;
 A description of what can go wrong;
 Information about other concurrent activities;
 A description of the state when the scenario finishes.
Scenario for collecting medical history in MHC-
PMS

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Scenario for collecting medical history in MHC-
PMS

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Use cases

 Use-cases are a scenario based technique in the UML

which identify the actors in an interaction and which
describe the interaction itself.
 A set of use cases should describe all possible
interactions with the system.
 High-level graphical model supplemented by more
detailed tabular description (see Chapter 5).
 Sequence diagrams may be used to add detail to use-
cases by showing the sequence of event processing in
the system.

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Use cases for the MHC-PMS

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Ethnography

 A social scientist spends a considerable time observing

and analysing how people actually work.
 People do not have to explain or articulate their work.
 Social and organisational factors of importance may be
observed.
 Ethnography is an observational technique that can be
used to understand social and organisational
requirements.
 Ethnographic studies have shown that work is usually
richer and more complex than suggested by simple
system models.
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Scope of ethnography

 Requirements that are derived from the way that people

actually work rather than the way which process
definitions suggest that they ought to work.
 Requirements that are derived from cooperation and
awareness of other people’s activities.
 Awareness of what other people are doing leads to changes in
the ways in which we do things.
 Ethnography is effective for understanding existing
processes but cannot identify new features that should
be added to a system.

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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.

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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?

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Requirements validation techniques

 Requirements reviews
 Systematic manual analysis of the requirements.
 Prototyping
 Using an executable model of the system to check requirements.
Covered in Chapter 2.
 Test-case generation
 Developing tests for requirements to check testability.

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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.

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Review checks

 Verifiability
 Is the requirement realistically testable?
 Comprehensibility
 Is the requirement properly understood?
 Traceability
 Is the origin of the requirement clearly stated?
 Adaptability
 Can the requirement be changed without a large impact on other
requirements?

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Requirements management

 Requirements management is the process of managing

changing requirements during the requirements
engineering process and system development.
 New requirements emerge as a system is being
developed and after it has gone into use.
 You need to keep track of individual requirements and
maintain links between dependent requirements so that
you can assess the impact of requirements changes.
You need to establish a formal process for making
change proposals and linking these to system
requirements.

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Changing requirements

 The business and technical environment of the system

always changes after installation.
 New hardware may be introduced, it may be necessary to
interface the system with other systems, business priorities may
change (with consequent changes in the system support
required), and new legislation and regulations may be introduced
that the system must implement
 The people who pay for a system and the users of that
system are rarely the same people.
 System customers impose requirements because of
organizational and budgetary constraints. These may conflict
with end-user requirements and, after delivery, new features may
have to be added for user support if the system is to meet its
goals.
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Changing requirements

 Large systems usually have a diverse user community,

with many users having different requirements and
priorities that may be conflicting or contradictory.

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Requirements evolution

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 Requirements management planning

 Establishes the level of requirements management detail

that is required.
 Requirements management decisions:
 Requirements identification Each requirement must be uniquely
identified so that it can be cross-referenced with other requirements.
 A change management process This is the set of activities that
assess the impact and cost of changes.
 Traceability policies These policies define the relationships between
each requirement and between the requirements and the system
design that should be recorded.
 Tool support Tools that may be used range from specialist
requirements management systems to spreadsheets and simple
database systems.
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Requirements change management

 Deciding if a requirements change should be accepted

 Problem analysis and change specification
• During this stage, the problem or the change proposal is analyzed
to check that it is valid. This analysis is fed back to the change
requestor who may respond with a more specific requirements
change proposal, or decide to withdraw the request.
 Change analysis and costing
• The effect of the proposed change is assessed using traceability
information and general knowledge of the system requirements.
Once this analysis is completed, a decision is made whether or not
to proceed with the requirements change.
 Change implementation
• The requirements document and, where necessary, the system
design and implementation, are modified. Ideally, the document
should be organized so that changes can be easily implemented.
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Requirements change management

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Key points

 Requirements for a software system set out what the

system should do and define constraints on its operation
and implementation.
 Functional requirements are statements of the services
that the system must provide or are descriptions of how
some computations must be carried out.
 Non-functional requirements often constrain the system
being developed and the development process being
used.
 They often relate to the emergent properties of the system and
therefore apply to the system as a whole.

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Key points

 The software requirements document is an agreed

statement of the system requirements. It should be
organized so that both system customers and software
developers can use it.
 The requirements engineering process is an iterative
process including requirements elicitation, specification
and validation.
 Requirements elicitation and analysis is an iterative
process that can be represented as a spiral of activities –
requirements discovery, requirements classification and
organization, requirements negotiation and requirements
documentation.
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Key points

 You can use a range of techniques for requirements

elicitation including interviews, scenarios, use-cases and
ethnography.
 Requirements validation is the process of checking the
requirements for validity, consistency, completeness,
realism and verifiability.
 Business, organizational and technical changes lead to
changes to the requirements for a software system.
Requirements management is the process of managing
and controlling these changes.

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