Software Engineering

Lecture 6,7,8

DR. Nashwa Nageh

CHAPTER 4 – REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

CHAPTER 4 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING 30/10/2014 2

TOPICS COVERED

 Functional and non-functional requirements

 Requirements engineering processes
 Requirements elicitation
 Requirements specification
 Requirements validation
 Requirements change

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REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

 The process of establishing the services that acustomer 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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WHAT IS A REQUIREMENT?

 It 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.

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REQUIREMENTS ABSTRACTION

“If a company wishes to let a contract for a large software development project, it must
define its needs in a sufficiently abstract way that a solution is not pre-defined. The
requirements must be written so that several contractors can bid for the contract,
offering, perhaps, different ways of meeting the client organization’s needs. Once a
contract has been awarded, the contractor must write a system definition for the client
in more detail so that the client understands and can validate what the software will do.
Both of these documents may be called the requirements document for the system.”

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CHAPTER 4 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

 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.

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 USER AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

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CHAPTER 4 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

READERS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF REQUIREMENTS
SPECIFICATION

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SYSTEM STAKEHOLDERS

 Any person or organization who is affected by the system in some way and so who has a
legitimate interest
 Stakeholder types
 End users
 System managers
 System owners
 External stakeholders

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STAKEHOLDERS IN THE MENTCARE SYSTEM

 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 MENTCARE SYSTEM

 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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 FUNCTIONAL AND NON-FUNCTIONAL
REQUIREMENTS

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 FUNCTIONAL AND NON-FUNCTIONAL
REQUIREMENTS
 Functional requirements
 Statements of services the system should provide, how
the systeshould 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
 m should react to particular inputs and how the system
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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MENTCARE SYSTEM: FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

 A user shall be able to search the appointments lists for all clinics.
 The system shall generate each day, for each clinic, a list of patients who are expected to
attend appointments that day.
 Each staff member using the system shall be uniquely identified by his or her 8-digit
employee number.

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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 requirement 1
 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.

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REQUIREMENTS COMPLETENESS AND CONSISTENCY

 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.
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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.
 Process requirements may also be specified mandating a particular IDE, programming
language or development method.
 Non-functional requirements may be more critical than functional requirements. If these
are not met, the system may be useless.

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TYPES OF NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT

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NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS IMPLEMENTATION

 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.

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NON-FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS

 Product requirements
 Requirements which specify that the delivered product must behave in a particular
way e.g. execution speed, reliability, etc.
 Organisational requirements
 Requirements which are a consequence of organisational policies and procedures
e.g. process standards used, implementation requirements, etc.
 External requirements
 Requirements which arise from factors which are external to the system and its
development process e.g. interoperability requirements, legislative requirements,
etc.
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EXAMPLES OF NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS IN THE
MENTCARE SYSTEM
Product requirement
The Mentcare system shall be available to all clinics
during normal working hours (Mon–Fri, 0830–17.30).
Downtime within normal working hours shall not exceed
five seconds in any one day.

Organizational requirement
Users of the Mentcare system shall authenticate
themselves using their health authority identity card.

External requirement
The system shall implement patient privacy provisions
as set out in HStan-03-2006-priv.

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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.
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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)

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 METRICS FOR SPECIFYING NONFUNCTIONAL 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 30/10/2014 26

CHAPTER 4 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING PROCESSES

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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

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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

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REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION

 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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 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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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 organisation
 Groups related requirements and organises them into coherent clusters.
 Prioritisation and negotiation
 Prioritising requirements and resolving requirements conflicts.
 Requirements specification
 Requirements are documented and input into the next round of the spiral.
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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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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.
 Interviewers need to be open-minded without pre-conceived ideas of what the system
should do
 You need to prompt the use to talk about the system by suggesting
requirements rather than simply asking them what they want.

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PROBLEMS WITH INTERVIEWS

 Application specialists may use language to describe their work that isn’t easy for the
requirements engineer to understand.
 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.

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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.
 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
I 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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FOCUSED ETHNOGRAPHY

 Developed in a project studying the air traffic control process

 Combines ethnography with prototyping
 Prototype development results in unanswered questions which focus the ethnographic
analysis.
 The problem with ethnography is that it studies existing practices which may have some
historical basis which is no longer relevant.

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ETHNOGRAPHY AND PROTOTYPING FOR REQUIREMENTS
ANALYSIS

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STORIES AND SCENARIOS

 Scenarios and user stories are real-life examples of how a system can be used.
 Stories and scenarios are a description of how a system may be used for a particular task.
 Because they are based on a practical situation, stakeholders can relate to them and can
comment on their situation with respect to the story.

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 REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION

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REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION

 The process of writing down the user and system requirements in a requirements
document.
 User requirements must 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. They cannot check that it represents what
CHAPTER 4 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING they want and are reluctant to accept it as a system contract 48

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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 architecture to satisfy non-functional requirements may be a domain
requirement.
 This may be the consequence of a regulatory requirement.

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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

 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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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USE CASES

 Use-cases are a kind of scenario that are included in the UML (The Unified Modeling
Language)
 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 (see
Chapter 5).
 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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USE CASES FOR THE MENTCARE 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.

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USERS OF A REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT

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REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT VARIABILITY

 Information in requirements document depends on type of system and the approach to

development used.
 Systems developed incrementally 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.
 IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

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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 This chapter should present a high-level overview of the anticipated
architecture 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
requirements detail. If necessary, further detail may also be added to the nonfunctional
specification requirements. 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
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so on.
 REQUIREMENTS VALIDATION

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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 CHANGE

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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 necessarily abide by.
 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.
 The final system requirements are inevitably a compromise between them and, with experience, it
is often discovered that the balance of support given to different users has to be changed.

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REQUIREMENTS EVOLUTION

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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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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. I discuss this process in more detail in the
following section.
 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 requirements engineering process is an iterative process that

includes requirements elicitation, specification and validation.
 Requirements elicitation is an iterative process that can be
represented as a spiral of activities – requirements discovery,
requirements classification and organization, requirements
negotiation and requirements documentation.
 You can use a range of techniques for requirements elicitation
including interviews and ethnography. User stories and scenarios
may be used to facilitate discussions.

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KEY POINTS

 Requirements specification is the process of formally documenting the user and system
requirements and creating a software requirements document.
 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.

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KEY POINTS

 Requirements validation is the process of checking the requirements for validity,

consistency, completeness, realism and verifiability.
 Business, organizational and technical changes inevitably 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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