Test 2

Question 1

Describe the good practice of holding elicitation interviews.

Answer 1

• They are an effective way to elicit requirements without taking too much stakeholder time because you meet with people to discuss only the specific requirements that are important to them.
• Interviews are helpful to separately elicit requirements from people in preparation for workshops where those people come together to resolve any conflicts.
• Interviews can be performed one-on-one or with a small group of stakeholders

Question 2

Explain who stakeholders are

Answer 2

A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that is actively involved in a project, is affected by its process or outcome, or can influence its process or outcome. Stakeholders can be internal or external to the project team and to the developing organization.

Question 3

Briefly describe the elicitation phase

Answer 3

Elicitation encompasses all of the activities involved with discovering requirements, such as interviews, workshops, document analysis, prototyping, and so on.

Question 4

Describe the good practice of performing document analysis

Answer 4

• Existing documentation can help reveal how systems currently work or what they are supposed to do.
• Documentation includes any written information about current systems, business processes, requirements specifications, competitor results, and COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) package user manuals
• Reviewing and analyzing the documents can help identify functionality that needs to remain, functionality that isn’t used, how people do their jobs currently, what competitors offer, and what vendors say their software should do.

Question 5

Briefly describe the analysis phase

Answer 5

Analyzing requirements involves reaching a richer and more precise understanding of each requirement and representing sets of requirements in multiple ways.

Question 6

Briefly explain software process assessment

Answer 6

Software process assessment is a method of determining the effectiveness of the software process with a goal towards improving the process.

Some approaches are:

• Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
• Standard CMMI Assessment Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI)
• CMM-Based Appraisal for Internal Process Improvement (CBA IPI)
• ISO IEC 90003 Software Engineering Standard

Question 7

Describe the good practice of identifying user classes and characteristics

Answer 7

This process involves identifying the various groups of users for the product and describing aspects of their job tasks, attitudes, location, or personal characteristics that might influence product design. It also involves creating user personas, i.e., descriptions of imaginary people who will represent particular user classes.

Question 8

Draw the requirements engineering process starting with Feasibility analysis

Answer 8

Question 9

Name and briefly describe the 6 capability levels

Answer 9

0.) Incomplete

An “incomplete process” is a process that is either not performed or partially performed. One or more of the specific goals of the process area are not satisfied and no generic goals exist for this level since there is no reason to institutionalize a partially performed process.

1.) Performed

A Capability Level 1 process is a process that is expected to perform all of the Capability Level1 specific and generic practices. Performance may not be stable and may not meet specific objectives such as quality, cost, and schedule, but useful work can be done.

2.) Managed

A managed process is planned, performed, monitored, and controlled for individual projects, groups, or stand-alone processes to achieve a given purpose. Managing the process achieves both the model objectives for the process as well as other objectives, such as cost, schedule, and quality.

3.) Defined

A capability level 3 process is characterized as a “defined process.” A defined process is a managed (capability level 2) process that is tailored from the organization’s set of standard processes according to the organization’s tailoring guidelines, and contributes work products, measures, and other process-improvement information to the organizational process assets.

4.) Quantitatively Managed

A capability level 4 process is characterized as a “quantitatively managed process.” A quantitatively managed process is a defined (capability level 3) process that is controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques. Quantitative objectives for quality and process performance are established and used as criteria in managing the process. Quality and process performance is understood in statistical terms and is managed throughout the life of the process.

5.) Optimizing

An optimizing process is a quantitatively managed process that is improved, based on an understanding of the common causes of process variation inherent to the process. It focuses on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative improvements. Both the defined processes and the organization’s set of standard processes are the targets of improvement activities.

Question 10

Write an example functional requirement

Answer 10

The system shall allow managers to view and print an inventory report.

Question 11

Briefly describe business requirements

Answer 11

These requirements describe why the organization is implementing the system, i.e., the business benefits the organization hopes to achieve.

Question 12

Describe the good practice of observing users performing their jobs

Answer 12

• Watching users perform their business tasks establishes a context for their potential use of a new application.
• Simple process flow diagrams can depict the steps and decisions involved and show how different user groups interact.
• Documenting the business process flow will help you identify requirements for a solution that’s intended to support that process.

Question 13

Purpose of CMMI core process area: Requirements Development

Answer 13

The purpose of Requirements Development (RD) is to produce and analyze customer, product, and product-component requirements.

Question 14

Briefly describe the CMMI

Answer 14

Provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes, which will improve their performance. Includes identifying your organization’s process strengths and weaknesses and making process changes to turn weaknesses into strengths.

Question 15

Briefly describe the validation phase

Answer 15

Requirements validation confirms that the specified requirements are the correct set of requirements.

Question 16

Briefly describe the elements of an elicitation plan

Answer 16

• Elicitation objectives
• Elicitation strategy and techniques
• Describe which techniques to use for each stakeholder group
• Schedule and resource estimates
• Identify customer and developer participants
• Effort and calendar time required
• Expected artifacts to be created
• Elicitation risks
• Identify the factors that may impede elicitation efforts

Question 17

Describe the continuous representations of CMMI

Answer 17

The continuous representation allows an organization to select a specific process area and improve its capability level. A capability level characterizes an organization’s capability and performance in a specific process area.

Question 18

Briefly describe requirements management

Answer 18

The point of requirements management is not to stifle change or to make it difficult. It is to anticipate and accommodate the very real changes that you can always expect so as to minimize their disruptive impact on the project.

Question 19

Describe the staged representation of CMMI

Answer 19

The staged representation is an approach that uses predefined sets of process areas to define a maturity level for an organization. A maturity level characterizes an organization’s capability and performance. The staged representation provides a pre-defined roadmap for organizational improvement based on proven grouping and ordering of processes and associated organizational relationships.

Question 20

Explain how to manage the relationship with the customer

Answer 20

Both customers and developers need to have an ongoing understanding of the product. Requirements engineerings should always keep the customer up to date (especially with bad news), always elicit comments and suggestions, and always strive for positive outcomes on both sides, i.e., win/win strategies.

Question 21

Write an example nonfunctional requirement

Answer 21

The system shall allow managers to view an inventory report within 2 seconds after request.

Question 22

Describe the good practice of defining product vision and scope

Answer 22

The vision statement gives all stakeholders a common understanding of the product’s outcome. The scope defines the boundary between what’s in and what’s out for a specific release or iteration. Both are based upon the product’s business requirements and together, the vision and scope provide a reference against which to evaluate proposed requirements. The vision should remain relatively stable throughout the project, but each planned release or iteration needs its own scope statement.

Question 23

Briefly describe business rules

Answer 23

These requirements include corporate policies, government regulations, industry standards, and computational algorithms.

Question 24

Briefly describe nonfunctional requirements

Answer 24

These requirements specify constraints on the services or operations offered by the system.

Question 25

Describe the good practice of defining a requirements engineering process

Answer 25

• Document the steps your organization follows to elicit, analyze, specify, validate, and manage requirements.
• Providing guidance on how to perform the key steps will help analysts do a consistently good job.
• It will also make it easier to plan each project’s requirements development and management tasks, schedule, and required resources.
• The project manager should incorporate requirements activities as discrete tasks in the project plan.

Question 26

Briefly describe user requirements

Answer 26

These requirements describe goals or tasks the users must be able to perform with the product that will provide value to someone. They describe what the user will be able to do with the system.

Question 27

Name and briefly describe the 5 maturity levels

Answer 27

1.) Initial 1.1. Processes are usually ad hoc and chaotic. 1.2. Success in these organizations depend on the competence and heroics of the people in the organization and not on the use of proven processes. 1.3. Produce products and services that work; however, they frequently exceed the budget and schedule of their projects. 1.4. Characterized by a tendency to over commit, abandon processes in the time of crisis, and not be able to repeat their past successes. 2.) Managed 2.1. Achieved all the specific and generic goals of the maturity level 2 process areas. 2.2. The projects of the organization have ensured that requirements are managed and that processes are planned, performed, measured, and controlled. 3.) Defined 3.1. Achieved all the specific and generic goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3. 3.2. Processes are well characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools, and methods. 3.3. The standards, process descriptions, and procedures for a project are tailored from the organization’s set of standard processes to suit a particular project or organizational unit. 3.4. Processes are managed more proactively using an understanding of the interrelationships of the process activities and detailed measures of the process, its work products, and its services. 4.) Quantitatively Managed 4.1. Achieved all the specific goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2, 3, and 4 and the generic goals assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3. 4.2. Sub-processes are selected that significantly contribute to the overall process performance. These selected sub-processes are controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques. 4.3. the performance of processes is controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques and is quantitatively predictable. At maturity level 3, processes are only qualitatively predictable. 5.) Optimizing 5.1. Achieved all the specific goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 and the generic goals assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3. 5.2. Processes are continually improved based on a quantitative understanding of the common causes of variation inherent in processes. 5.3. The effects of deployed process improvements are measured and evaluated against the quantitative process-improvement objectives. Both the defined processes and the organization’s set of standard processes are targets of measurable improvement activities.

Question 28

Briefly describe functional requirements

Answer 28

These requirements specify the behaviors the product will exhibit under specific conditions. They describe what the developers must implement to enable users to accomplish their tasks (user requirements).

Question 29

Purpose of CMMI core process area: Requirements Management

Answer 29

The purpose of Requirements Management (REQM) is to manage the requirements of the project’s products and product components and to identify inconsistencies between those requirements and the project’s plans and work products.

Question 30

Describe the good practice of educating stakeholders about requirements

Answer 30

• The most effective requirements training classes have an audience that spans multiple project functional areas, not just BAs.
• Users who participate in software development should receive one or two days of education about requirements to they understand terminology, key concepts and practices, and why this is such an important contributor to project success.
• Bringing together the various stakeholders for a class on software requirements can be an effective team-building activity.
• All parties will better appreciate the challenges their counterparts face and what the participants require from each other for the whole team to succeed.

Question 31

Briefly describe features

Answer 31

These requirements consist of one or more logically related system capabilities that provide value to a user and are described by a set of functional requirements. A feature is typically a set of requirements. They can be represented using a feature tree.

Question 32

Briefly describe the specification phase

Answer 32

Requirements specification involves representing and storing the collected requirements knowledge in a persistent and well-organized fashion.

Question 33

Briefly describe system requirements

Answer 33

These requirements describe the requirements for a product that is composed of multiple components or subsystems. A ‘system’ consists of software, hardware, people, and processes.

Question 34

Define software requirements

Answer 34

A software requirement is a specification of what should be implemented. It is a description of how the system should behave, or of a system property or attribute. It may be a constraint on the development process of the system.