Software Requirements Engineering Info Sheet
Introduction
Software Requirements Engineering is a key area of software engineering that focuses on the analysis, documentation, and management of software requirements. It involves understanding stakeholder needs, translating them into requirements, and ensuring that they are met throughout the software development lifecycle.
Key Concepts
- Stakeholders: Individuals or groups of individuals who have a vested interest in the software system being developed.
- Requirements: Statements of desired behavior, properties or characteristics of the software system.
- Functional vs Non-functional Requirements: Functional requirements describe what the system should do, while non-functional requirements describe how well the system should do it.
- Requirements Engineering Processes: A set of activities designed to elicit, analyze, validate and manage requirements.
Software Requirements Engineering Processes
Requirements Elicitation
The process of gathering requirements from stakeholders. Techniques for eliciting requirements include:
- Interviewing: One on one sessions with stakeholders where questions are asked to elicit their requirements.
- Surveys and Questionnaires: Large number of stakeholders are asked to provide responses that can be used to better understand the requirements.
- Brainstorming: A technique that is used to come up with a wide range of ideas for requirements within a short period of time.
Requirements Analysis
The process of analyzing, interpreting and prioritizing the requirements gathered. This involves clarification, validation and modeling of requirements.
Requirements Validation
The process of ensuring that the requirements are complete, consistent, and accurate. This helps to identify errors, omissions, and defects in the requirements.
Requirements Management
The process of controlling changes to requirements throughout the software development lifecycle. This involves configuration management, traceability and communication.
Key Takeaways
- Software Requirements Engineering involves the analysis, documentation, and management of software requirements.
- Stakeholders are individuals or groups of individuals with an interest in the software system being developed.
- Functional and non-functional requirements are the two types of requirements.
- Requirements Engineering Processes include requirements elicitation, analysis, validation and management.
Actionable Items
- Learn more about eliciting requirements from stakeholders by completing an interview or survey.
- Practice prioritizing requirements in a case study or hypothetical example.
- Research configuration management techniques for requirements management.