CT-365 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

LECTURE 2

REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING
AND SYSTEM MODELING

HUMA TABASSUM
LECTURER
DEPT. OF COMPUTER SCIENCE & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
NED UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
Requirements Engineering

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Requirements Engineering
• A requirement may range from a high-level abstract statement of a service
or of a system constraint to a detailed mathematical functional specification.
• This is inevitable as requirements may serve a dual function
• May be the basis for a bid for a contract - therefore must be open to interpretation;
• May be the basis for the contract itself - therefore must be defined in detail;
• Both these statements may be called requirements.
• Requirements Engineering is the process of establishing the services that a
customer requires from a system and the constraints under which it
operates and is developed.
• The system requirements are the descriptions of the system services and
constraints that are generated during the requirements engineering process.
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Types of Requirement
• 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 so may be part of a
contract between client and
contractor. 4
Readers of Different Types of Requirements
Specification

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Functional & Non-Functional Requirements
• 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.
• May state what the system should not do.
• Non-functional requirements
• Constraints on the services or functions offered by the system such as timing
constraints, constraints on the development process, standards, etc.
• Often apply to the system as a whole rather than individual features or
services.
• Domain requirements
• Constraints on the system from the domain of operation.
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Functional Requirements
• Describe functionality or system services.
• Depend on the type of software, expected users and the type of
system where the software is used.
• Functional user requirements may be high-level statements of what
the system should do.
• Functional system requirements should describe the system services
in detail.

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Requirements Imprecision
• Problems arise when functional requirements are not precisely stated.
• Ambiguous requirements may be interpreted in different ways by developers
and users.
• Consider the term ‘search’ in this requirement: “A user shall be able to
search the appointments lists for all clinics”.
• User intention – search for a patient name across all appointments in all clinics;
• Developer interpretation – search for a patient name in an individual clinic. User
chooses clinic then search.
• In principle, requirements should be both complete and consistent.
• Complete
• They should include descriptions of all facilities required.
• Consistent
• There should be no conflicts or contradictions in the descriptions of the system facilities.
• In practice, because of system and environmental complexity, it is impossible
to produce a complete and consistent requirements document. 8
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Non-Functional Requirements
• These define system properties and constraints e.g. reliability, response
time and storage requirements.
• Constraints are I/O device capability, system representations, etc.
• Non-functional requirements may be more critical than functional
requirements.
• If these are not met, the system may be useless.
• Non-functional requirements may affect the overall architecture of a
system rather than the individual components.
• For example, to ensure that performance requirements are met, you may have to
organize the system to minimize communications between components.
• A single non-functional requirement, such as a security requirement, may
generate a number of related functional requirements that define system
services that are required.
• It may also generate requirements that restrict existing requirements. 10
Types of Non-Functional Requirement

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 Goals and Requirements
• Non-functional requirements may be very difficult to state precisely and
imprecise requirements may be difficult to verify.
• Goal
• A general intention of the user such as ease of use.
• Verifiable non-functional requirement
• A statement using some measure that can be objectively tested.
• Goals are helpful to developers as they convey the intentions of the system users.
• For example, think about usability requirements:
• The system should be easy to use by medical staff and should be organized in such a way
that user errors are minimized. (Goal)
• Medical staff shall be able to use all the system functions after four hours of training. After
this training, the average number of errors made by experienced users shall not exceed two
per hour of system use. (Testable non-functional requirement) 12
Metrics for Specifying Non-Functional
Requirements
Property Measure
Speed Processed transactions/second
User/event response time
Screen refresh time
Size Mbytes
Number of ROM chips
Ease of use Training time
Number of help frames
Reliability Mean time to failure
Probability of unavailability
Rate of failure occurrence
Availability
Robustness Time to restart after failure
Percentage of events causing failure
Probability of data corruption on failure
Portability Percentage of target dependent statements
Number of target systems
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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. 14
Requirements Elicitation & 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,
• Interacting with stakeholders to discover their requirements.
• Domain requirements are also discovered at this stage.
• Requirements classification and organization,
• Groups related requirements and organises them into coherent clusters.
• Requirements prioritization and negotiation,
• Prioritising requirements and resolving requirements conflicts.
• Requirements specification.
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• 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 may change.

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17
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
languages more 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. They cannot check that it represents
what they want and are reluctant to accept it as a system contract

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Requirements & 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 architecture to satisfy non-functional requirements may
be a domain requirement.
• This may be the consequence of a regulatory requirement.
• Requirements are written as natural language sentences
supplemented by diagrams and tables.
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Natural Language Specification
• Used for writing requirements because it is expressive, intuitive and
universal.
• This means that the requirements can be understood by users and customers.
• However, there are certain problems inherent 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.

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Guidelines for Writing Requirements

• Invent 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.

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Use Cases
• Use-cases are a kind of scenario that are included in the UML.
• Use cases 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.
• UML 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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The Software Requirements Document
• The software requirements document is the official statement of what is
required of the system developers.
• Should include both a definition of user requirements and a specification of
the system requirements.
• It is NOT a design document. As far as possible, it should set of WHAT the
system should do rather than HOW it should do it.
• Information in requirements document depends on type of system and the
approach to development used.
• Incremental systems will, typically, have less detail in the requirements document.
• Requirements documents standards have been designed e.g. IEEE
standard.
• These are mostly applicable to the requirements for large systems engineering
projects. 24
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 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.
• Techniques include
• Requirements reviews
• Systematic manual analysis of the requirements.
• Prototyping
• Using an executable model of the system to check requirements.
• Test-case generation
• Developing tests for requirements to check testability.
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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 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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System Modeling

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System Modeling
• System modeling is the process of developing abstract models of a
system, with each model presenting a different view or perspective of
that system.
• System modeling has now come to mean representing a system using
some kind of graphical notation, which is now almost always based on
notations in the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
• It helps the analyst to understand the functionality of the system and
models are used to communicate with customers.

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Existing & Planned System Models
• Models of the existing system are used during requirements engineering.
• They help clarify what the existing system does and can be used as a basis for
discussing its strengths and weaknesses.
• These then lead to requirements for the new system.
• Models of the new system are used during requirements engineering to
help explain the proposed requirements to other system stakeholders.
• Engineers use these models to discuss design proposals and to document the system
for implementation.

• In a model-driven engineering process, it is possible to generate a

complete or partial system implementation from the system model.
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System Perspectives
• An external perspective, where you model the context or
environment of the system.
• An interaction perspective, where you model the interactions
between a system and its environment, or between the components
of a system.
• A structural perspective, where you model the organization of a
system or the structure of the data that is processed by the system.
• A behavioral perspective, where you model the dynamic behavior of
the system and how it responds to events.

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UML Diagram Types
• Activity diagrams, which show the activities involved in a process or
in data processing .
• Use case diagrams, which show the interactions between a system
and its environment.
• Sequence diagrams, which show interactions between actors and the
system and between system components.
• Class diagrams, which show the object classes in the system and the
associations between these classes.
• State diagrams, which show how the system reacts to internal and
external events.

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Use of Graphical Models
• As a means of facilitating discussion about an existing or proposed
system
• Incomplete and incorrect models are OK as their role is to support discussion.
• As a way of documenting an existing system
• Models should be an accurate representation of the system but need not be
complete.
• As a detailed system description that can be used to generate a
system implementation
• Models have to be both correct and complete.

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Context Models
• Context models are used to illustrate the operational context of a system –
they show what lies outside the system boundaries.
• Social and organisational concerns may affect the decision on where to position
system boundaries.
• Architectural models show the system and its relationship with other
systems.
• System boundaries are established to define what is inside and what is
outside the system.
• They show other systems that are used or depend on the system being developed.
• Context models simply show the other systems in the environment, not
how the system being developed is used in that environment.
• Process models reveal how the system being developed is used in broader
business processes.
• UML activity diagrams may be used to define business process models. 37
The Context of the Mentcare System

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Process Model of Involuntary Detention

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Interaction Models
• Modeling user interaction is important as it helps to identify user
requirements.
• Modeling system-to-system interaction highlights the communication
problems that may arise.
• Modeling component interaction helps us understand if a proposed
system structure is likely to deliver the required system performance
and dependability.
• Use case diagrams and sequence diagrams may be used for
interaction modeling.

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Transfer-data Use Case

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Sequence
Diagram
for
Transfer
Data

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Structural Models
• Structural models of software display the organization of a system in
terms of the components that make up that system and their
relationships.
• Structural models may be static models, which show the structure of
the system design, or dynamic models, which show the organization
of the system when it is executing.
• You create structural models of a system when you are discussing and
designing the system architecture.
• Class diagrams and CRC cards are used for structural modeling.

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Classes and Associations in the MHC-PMS

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 Generalization

Aggregation

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Behavioral Models
• Behavioral models are models of the dynamic behavior of a system as it is
executing.
• They show what happens or what is supposed to happen when a system responds to
a stimulus from its environment.
• You can think of these stimuli as being of two types:
• Data: Some data arrives that has to be processed by the system.
• Events: Some event happens that triggers system processing. Events may have
associated data, although this is not always the case.
• Data-driven models show the sequence of actions involved in processing
input data and generating an associated output.
• Event-driven models show how a system responds to external and internal
events.
• It is based on the assumption that a system has a finite number of states and that
events (stimuli) may cause a transition from one state to another.
• Use case, activity, sequence, and state diagrams can be used for behavioral
modeling. 46
Use Cases in the Mentcare System Involving
the Role ‘Medical Receptionist’

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Sequence Diagram for View Patient
Information

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State Diagram of a Microwave Oven

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