Chapter 4 – Requirements Engineering

Lecture 1

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Topics covered

✧ Functional and non-functional requirements

✧ The software requirements document
✧ Requirements specification
✧ Requirements engineering processes
✧ Requirements elicitation and analysis
✧ Requirements validation
✧ Requirements management

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Requirements Engineering

✧ Requirement Engineering means that requirements for a

product are defined, managed and tested/validated
systematically.
✧ The process of finding out, analyzing, documenting and
checking these services and constraints is called
Requirements Engineering (RE).
✧ Requirements Engineering produces a one large
document, written in a natural language, contains a
description of what the system will do.
✧ The requirements themselves 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?

✧ A requirement is simply a high-level, abstract statement

of a service that a system should provide or a constraint
on a system.

✧ 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 (Davis)

“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.

1. 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.

2. 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.” 5
 Types of requirement

✧ User requirements
▪ Statements written in natural language plus diagrams of the
services the system provides and its operational constraints.
▪ High-level abstract requirements

✧ System requirements
▪ A structured document setting out detailed descriptions of the
system’s functions, services and operational constraints.
▪ The detailed description of what the system should do.
▪ Defines what should be implemented so may be part of a contract
between client and contractor.

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Case Study : MHC-PMS

✧ The MHC-PMS (Mental Health Care-Patient

Management System) is an information system that is
intended for use in clinics .
✧ It makes use of a centralized database of patient
information but has also been designed to run on a PC,
so that it may be accessed and used from sites that do
not have secure network connectivity
✧ When the local systems have secure network access,
they use patient information in the database but they can
download and use local copies of patient records when
they are disconnected

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MHC-PMS goals

✧ To generate management information that allows health

service managers to assess performance against local
and government targets.

✧ To provide medical staff with timely information to

support the treatment of patients.

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The organization of the MHC-PMS

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User and system requirements

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Readers of different types of requirements
specification

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Functional and non-functional requirements

✧ Functional requirements
▪ Statements of services the system should provide, how the
system should react to particular inputs and how the system
should 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
▪ 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 being developed, the

expected users of the software.

✧ 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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User and system requirements

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Functional requirements for the MHC-PMS

✧ 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 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, 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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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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Types of nonfunctional requirement

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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. operational process requirements
that define how the system will be used, development process
requirements that specify the programming language.
✧ External requirements
▪ All requirements that are derived from factors external to the
system and its development process. e.g. regulatory
requirements, legislative requirements, ethical requirements, etc.
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Examples of nonfunctional requirements in the
MHC-PMS

Product requirement
The MHC-PMS 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 MHC-PMS 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
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Domain requirements

✧ Domain requirements are derived from the application

domain of the system rather than from the specific needs
of system users.
✧ For example, a train control system has to take into
account the braking characteristics in different weather
conditions.
✧ Domain requirements may be new functional
requirements, constraints on existing requirements or
define specific computations.
✧ If domain requirements are not satisfied, the system may
be unworkable.
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Train protection system

✧ This is a domain requirement for a train protection

system:
✧ The deceleration of the train shall be computed as:
▪ Dtrain = Dcontrol + Dgradient

▪ where Dgradient is 9.81ms2 * compensated gradient/alpha and

where the values of 9.81ms2 /alpha are known for different types
of train.
✧ It is difficult for a non-specialist to understand the
implications of this and how it interacts with other
requirements.

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Domain requirements problems

✧ Understandability

▪ Requirements are expressed in the language of the application

domain;

▪ This is often not understood by software engineers developing

the system.

✧ Implicitness

▪ Domain specialists understand the area so well that they do not

think of making the domain requirements explicit.

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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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Quiz 5

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Chapter 4 – Requirements Engineering

Lecture 2

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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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Agile methods and requirements

✧ Many agile methods argue that producing a

requirements document is a waste of time as
requirements change so quickly.
✧ The document is therefore always out of date.
✧ Methods such as XP use incremental requirements
engineering and express requirements as ‘user stories’
(discussed in Chapter 3).
✧ This is practical for business systems but problematic for
systems that require a lot of pre-delivery analysis (e.g.,
critical systems) or systems developed by several teams.

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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.

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SRS format

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

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Requirements specification

✧ The process of writing down the user and system

requirements in a requirements document.
✧ User requirements have to 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 they want
and are reluctant to accept it as a system contract

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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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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 = round ((r2 – r1)/4)
increase stable or increasing If rounded result = 0 then
((r2 – r1) ≥ (r1 – r0)) CompDose = MinimumDose

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Quiz 6

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