Final Material - Requirements Engineering Flashcards
What is requirements engineering?
A sub-field of software engineering to help you understand what you are going to build
Why is requirements engineering important?
Ensures we find out what the customer really wants ahead of time so we don’t need to come back and make changes. Helps to ensure you are solving the right problem
What are user requirements?
They contain a high-level description of requirements written in natural language without technical details
What are system requirements?
They contain a detailed description of requirements that are more technical and rigorously specified
Why are system requirements important?
We need the specific details in order to write proper test cases. They cannot be made with user requirements alone
What are functional requirements?
Requirements related to the technical functionality of the system and how it must work. Ambiguous requirements may be interpreted in different ways
What are non-functional requirements?
Requirements related to the performance of the system like timing constraints and standards. These requirements still need quantitative measures to ensure the requirement is met.
What are the activities of requirements engineering?
Requirements elicitation
Requirements analysis (specification)
Requirements validation
What is requirements elicitation?
Involves technical staff working with customers to determine application domain, services the system should provide, and system operational constraints
What are the challenges of requirements elicitation?
- Stakeholders don’t know what they want
- Stakeholders specify requirements in their own terms
- Different stakeholders have conflicting requirements
- Organizational factors influence system requirements
- Requirements change during the analysis process
What is requirements analysis (specification)?
The process of writing down the requirements in a requirements document. The requirements must be correct, complete, consistent, and unambiguous. They are written in the Software Requirements Specification
What is requirements validation and why is it important?
Validation is concerned with demonstrating that the requirements define what the customer really wants. This is important because requirements error costs are high so we need to be sure they are valid first.
What are the 5 things that need to be checked for in validation?
Validity - The system provides the functions that best support customer needs
Consistency - There should be no requirements conflicts
Completeness - All functions required by the customer should be included
Realism - Requirements are able to be implemented given available budget and technology
Verifiability - Requirements are able to be checked (should be quantitative)
