Addis Ababa Science and Technology University

College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering

Course Code SWEG3104
Course Name Software Requirements Engineering
Coordinator Department of Software Engineering
Batch Info. Semester II A.Y: 2021/22 Year: III
Level B.SC. In Software Engineering
Location/s Kilinto Akaki-Kaliti
Instructor (s) Behailu G. (Asst. Prof.)
Credit Hour 3
Prerequisites SWEG3251
Co-requisite (s)
The purpose of requirements engineering is to develop a common understanding
of the needs, priorities, and constraints relevant to a software system. Many
software failures arise from an incomplete understanding of requirements for the
software to be developed or inadequate management of those requirements.

Specifications of requirements range in formality from completely informal

Synopsis
(e.g., spoken) to rigorously mathematical (e.g., written in a formal specification
language such as Z or first-order logic). In practice, successful software
engineering efforts use requirements specifications to reduce ambiguity and
improve the consistency and completeness of the development team’s
understanding of the vision of the intended software. Plan-driven approaches
tend to produce formal documents with numbered requirements.
This course introduces students to the process of requirements
engineering and helps them understand important issues in requirements
Course engineering. It will also help them to learn and apply the RE concepts for
Description elicitation, specification, modeling and analysis of software
requirements. Important topics include Requirement engineering types,
Requirements management and validation of requirements.
Course Objectives of the course are to:
objectives  provide an overview of different Software Requirements types
(functional vs non-functional (quality), constraints, business
requirements, business rules, user and system requirements);
 explain the Software Requirements Process (ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148
Standard for Requirements Engineering) also in agile contexts;
 provide the instruments for the definition of user requirements;
 describe different software requirements elicitation modalities;
 provide approaches for requirements analysis and verification &
validation;
 provide approaches to manage requirements prioritization;
 describe the software architecture and the relevance in the context of
software requirements.
 describe how to decompose system models: abstraction, & different
system views for the definition of the software architecture from the
 requirements;
 describe how to model Non-Functional Requirements (NFR);

At the end of the course students will:

 have a clear understanding about processes, tools and techniques used in
requirements engineering;
 understand the concepts of software requirements elicitation, modeling,
validation and verification;
 be able to model software requirements rigorously according to the latest
requirements engineering standards;
Learning  be able to conduct a prioritization process for software requirements
outcomes according to different approaches;
 be able to make a reasoned choice about the best approach for
requirements modeling given the context of a project;
 be able to proper manage requirements and their quality concerns;
 understand the differences between different requirements modeling
approaches (agile and non-agile);
 be able to generate and maintain a software requirements specification
document.
Syllabus
Weeks Allotted Chapters
1. Introduction to Requirements Engineering
 Definitions, role in SDLC, layered model, types of requirements
1-2
(Functional Requirements, Non-Functional Requirements), Modeling and
RE, AS-IS vs TO-BE, RE process & activities, Requirements verification
and validation.
2. Requirements Inception and Elicitation
 Inception Requirements :
◦ Problem Analysis:
▪ Five Steps for Problem Analysis.
◦ Business Requirements:
▪ context diagram, ecosystem maps, events list, feature trees, the
goal-design scale.
 Elicitation Requirements:
3-4 ◦ Goals, Risks, and Challenges, Sources of Requirements,
Requirements Elicitation Tasks, Elicitation Problems.
 Elicitation techniques:
◦ Analysis of Existing Systems, Interviews, Brainstorming,
Prototyping, Use Cases (Stakeholders Analysis), Agile approaches
with User Stories.
3. Developing Requirements Analysis
 ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 Standard for Requirements Analysis.
 (C)lass (R)esponsability (C)ollaborators cards. Linking Requirements to
UML Analysis Models.
 Requirements Specification:
5-7
◦ Requirements document structure
◦ Requirements document standard and Guidelines.
◦ Examples: Case Studies
 4. System Modeling Requirements
 Goal modeling techniques (i*, KAOS etc.)
 User Requirements: User Stories & Use cases modeling:
◦ Actor Role Models, Role Activity Diagrams (RADs)
▪ Case studies, examples and class activity
8-10 ◦ Behavior-Driven Development (BDD):
▪ Feature-Driven Meta Modeling.
▪ Given-When-Then Approach
 Decomposing system models: abstraction, & different system views. The
Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) Method.
 Features of Software/System Architecture Requirements
5. Requirements Verification & Validation
 Model Checking:
◦ Consistency checks, CRUD checks, Acceptance Testing
 Requirement Prioritization:
11-12 ◦ Analytic Hierarchy (AHP) process, Software Quality Deployment
Function (SQFD), the Agile Model Path Plans.
 Quality Model Requirements:
◦ SQuaRE (Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation)
& ISO/IEC 25010.
13-14
6. Requirements Effort estimation & Project Velocity
 Early models of effort estimation (LOCs based).
◦ Three modalities of estimation: COCOMO II, k-Nearest Neighbour,
Planning Poker

 Lectures/Small Group Projects:

◦ Frontal lectures and a small interesting group project developed
during lectures to see the practical application of theory and
techniques seen during the course.
Teaching
 Frameworks and Tools:
Methods
◦ ReqIF Studio, Gherkin BDD, Cucumber BDD, Software
Development IDE (E.g.: Eclipse IDE), Software Project
Development Tools (E/g: PlantUML), Graph Modelling
Framework (E.g: Graph Walker), Feature IDE (E.g: Feature
Modeling Plugin, SPLOT, etc.).

Assessment  Attendance (5%), Tests (20%), Projects (25%), and Final Exam (50%).
Methods  Grade Policies: As per the University Legislation.

Text books:
 Pohl, Klaus. Requirements engineering fundamentals: a study guide for the certified professional
for requirements engineering exam-foundation level-IREB compliant. Rocky Nook, Inc., 2016.
 Sommerville, Ian. Software Engineering GE. Pearson Australia Pty Limited, 2016.
Recommended References:
 Young, Ralph Rowland. The requirements engineering handbook. Artech House, 2004.
 Winters, Titus, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright. Software engineering at google: Lessons
learned from programming over time. O'Reilly Media, 2020.
 Macaulay, Linda A. Requirements engineering. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.
 Elizabeth Hull, Ken Jackson and Jeremy Dick. “Requirements Engineering”, 3rd Ed, Springer-
Verlag London Limited, 2011.
 Bass, Len, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman. Software architecture in practice. Addison-Wesley
Professional, 2003.
 Axel Van Lamsweerde (2009) “Requirements Engineering: from system goals to UML Models
to software specifications”, Wiley, 2009.
 Cockbum, Alistair. "Writing effective use cases." Addison-Wesley, Boston. Ferber D (2004)
Synthetic biology. Microbes made to order. Science 303 (2001): 158-161.
 Nesi, Hilary, and Sian Alsop. "Stories and scenarios: Lecturers’ use of fantastic hypothetical
events." Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021): 101022.
 Jeffries, Ron. "Extreme Programming and Agile Software Development Methodologies." (2003).