IREB_CPRE_Glossary Flashcards
Acceptance
The process of assessing whether a system satisfies all its requirements
Acceptance test
A test that assesses whether a system satisfies all its requirements.
Activity diagram
A diagram type in UML which models the flow of actions in a system or in a component including data flows and areas of responsibility where necessary.
Actor
- Generally in RE: A person, a system or a technical device in the context of a system that interacts with the system.
- Especially in goal-oriented RE: a person, a system or a technical device that may act and process information in order to achieve some goals.
Adequacy (of a requirement)
The degree to which a requirement expresses the stakeholders’ true desires and needs (i.e., those they had actually in mind when stating the requirement).
Application domain
Those parts of the real world that are relevant for determining the context of a system.
Artifact
An intermediate or final result of system development; for example, a requirements specification.
Attribute
A characteristic property of an entity.
Baseline
A stable, change-controlled configuration of artifacts.
Baselines serve for release planning and release definition as well as for project management purposes such as effort estimation.
Behavior model
A model describing the behavior of a system or component, e.g., by a state machine.
Bug
A spot in an artifact that is incorrectly described or crafted. Synonyms: for Defect, Fault.
Cardinality
- In modeling: The minimum and maximum number of objects in a relationship. In UML, the term multiplicity is used for cardinality.
- In mathematics: The number of elements in a set.
Synonym: Multiplicity
Change control board
A committee of client and supplier representatives that decides on change requests.
Abbreviation: CCB
Change request
In RE: A well-argued request for changing one or more baselined requirements.
Changeability (of an artifact)
The degree to which an artifact enables a required modification of the artifact.
Checking (requirements)
Comprises requirements validation and checking requirements for qualities such as unambiguity or comprehensibility.
Note that some sources define validation broader and consider the terms checking and validation to be synonyms.
Class
Represents a set of objects of the same kind by describing the structure of the objects, the ways they can be manipulated and how they behave.
Class diagram
A diagrammatic representation of a class model.
Class model
A model consisting of a set of classes and relationships between them.
Completeness (of requirements)
- For a single requirement: The degree to which a requirement contains all necessary information
- For a requirements specification: The degree to which the specification contains all information which is necessary for developing a system that satisfies the stakeholders’ desires and needs.
Compliance
The capability of an artifact to adhere to standards, regulations, laws, or other formally imposed documents.
Systems frequently need to comply with standards, regulations, and laws constraining the domain where the system is deployed. Such compliance can only be ensured systematically if compliance checking already starts with the requirements.
Component
- In general: A delimitable part of a system.
- In software architecture: An encapsulated set of coherent objects or classes that jointly provide a service.
Note: When viewed in isolation, a component is a system by itself.
Configuration
A consistent set of logically coherent units. The units are individually identifiable artifacts or parts of artifacts (e.g., requirements) in at most one version per unit.
Conformity (of requirements)
The degree to which a requirements specification conforms to regulations given in some standard.
Consistency (of requirements)
The degree to which a set of ?requirements is free of contradicting statements.
Constraint
A requirement that limits the solution space beyond what is necessary for meeting the given functional requirements and quality requirements.
Context
- In general: The network of thoughts and meanings needed for understanding phenomena or utterances.
- Especially in RE: The part of a system’s environment being relevant for understanding the system and its requirements.
Context in the second meaning is also called the system context.
Context boundary
Boundary between the context of a system and those parts of the application domain that are irrelevant for the system and its requirements.
The context boundary separates the relevant part of the environment of a system to be developed from the irrelevant part, i.e., the part that does not influence the system to be developed and, thus, does not have to be considered during requirements engineering.
Context diagram
- A diagrammatic representation of a context model.
2. In Structured Analysis, the context diagram is the root of the dataflow diagram hierarchy.
Context model
A model describing a system in its context.
Correctness
The degree to which the information contained in an artifact is provably true.
In RE, correctness is frequently used as a synonym for adequacy.
Customer
A person or organization who receives a product or service.
Also see stakeholder.
Customer requirements specification
A coarse description of the required capabilities of a system from the customer’s perspective.
Usually supplied by the customer.
Dataflow diagram
A diagram modeling the functionality of a system or component by processes (also called activities), data stores and data flows. Incoming data flows trigger processes which then consume the received data, transform them, read/write persistent data held in data stores and then produce new data flows which may be intermediate results that trigger other processes or final results that leave the system.
Decision table
A tabular, systematic representation of a complex decision that depends on multiple criteria.
Defect
A spot in an artifact that is incorrectly described or crafted.
Synonym: fault, bug
Domain
A range of relevant things (for some given matter); for example, an application domain.
Effectiveness
The degree to which something actually happens in the way it ought to happen.
In RE, typically the degree to which a system actually enables its users to achieve their goals as stated in the system’s requirements.
Efficiency
The degree to which a result is achieved with minimum consumption of resources.
Elicitation (of requirements)
The process of seeking, capturing and consolidating requirements from available requirements sources. May include the re-construction or creation of requirements.
Synonym: Requirements discovery, Requirements elicitation
End user
A person who uses the functionality provided by a system.
Synonym: User.
Entity
- In general: an element or set of elements that may stand for any conceivable item, e.g., a system, a part of reality, a thing, an organization, a process, etc.
- In entity-relationship-modeling: an individual object which has an identity and does not depend on another object.
Entity-relationship diagram
A graphic representation of an entity-relationship model.
Abbreviation: ERD
Entity-relationship model
A model of data that are relevant for a ?system, or of the data of an ?application domain. An ERM consists of a set of entity types that are each characterized by attributes and linked by relationships.
Abbreviation: ERM, ER Model
Error
A discrepancy between an observed behavior or result and the specified behavior or result.
An error typically is a symptom for the existence of a fault or defect in some artifact.
Fault
A spot in an artifact that is incorrectly described or crafted.
Synonym: Bug, Defect
Fault Tolerance
The capability of a system to continue normal operation despite the presence of (hardware or software) faults.
Fault tolerance may be stated as a quality requirement.
Feature
A delimitable characteristic of a system that provides value for stakeholders.
Normally comprises several requirements and is used for communicating with stakeholders on a higher level of abstraction and for expressing variable or optional characteristics.
Functional requirement
A requirement concerning a result of behavior that shall be provided by a function of a system (or of a component or service).
Functionality
The capabilities of a system as stated by its functional requirements.
Glossary
A collection of definitions of terms that are relevant in some domain. Frequently, a glossary also contains cross-references, ?synonyms, homonyms, acronyms, and abbreviations.
Goal
A desired state of affairs (that a stakeholder wants to achieve).
Goals describe intentions of stakeholders. They may conflict with one another.
Goal model
A model that represents the goals of something as an ordered structure of sub-goals.
Homonym
A term looking identical to another term, but having a different meaning.
For example, bill as a bank note and bill as a list (of materials) are homonyms.