SOFTWARE ENGINEERING I

Lecture 2
Requirements Engineering

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 TOPICS COVERED
• Functional and non-functional requirements
• The software requirements document (SRD)
• Requirements specification
• Requirements engineering processes
• Requirements elicitation and analysis
• Requirements validation
• Requirements management
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 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING?

The process of establishing the services that the customer requires from a system and
the constraints under which it operates and is developed.

The requirements themselves are the descriptions of the system services and
constraints that are generated during the requirements engineering process.

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REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING .. WHY?
“ Without requirements or design, programming is the art of
adding bugs to an empty text file. ” - Louis Srygley

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 WHAT IS A REQUIREMENT?

• It may range from a high-level abstract statement of a service or of a

system constraint to a detailed mathematical functional specification.
• 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. 5
 Types of requirement

• User requirements
• Statements in natural language plus diagrams of the services the system provides and
its operational constraints.
• Written for customers.
• System requirements
• A structured document setting out detailed descriptions of the system’s functions,
services and operational constraints. Defines what should be implemented so may be
part of a contract between client and contractor.
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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 9
 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
• User intention – search for a patient name across all appointments in all
clinics;
• Developer interpretation – search for a patientname in an
individual clinic. User chooses clinic then search.
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 NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

o These define system properties and constraints

e.g. reliability, response time and storage requirements.
o Constraints are I/O device capability, system representations, etc.
o Process requirements may also be specified mandating a particular IDE
(integrated development environment), programming language or
development method.
o Non-functional requirements may be more critical than functional
requirements. If these are not met, the system may be useless.
Can be grouped into 3 classes … 12
 NON-FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS
Product requirements
• Requirements which specify that the delivered product must behave in a
particular way
e.g. execution speed, reliability, etc.
Organizational requirements
• Requirements which are a consequence of organisational policies and
procedures
e.g. process standards used, implementation requirements, etc.
External requirements
• Requirements which arise from factors which are external to the system and
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its development process
e.g. interoperability requirements, legislative requirements, etc.
TYPES OF NONFUNCTIONAL
REQUIREMENT

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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 secondsin any one day.

Organizational requirement
Users of the MHC-PMS system shall authenticate themselves using their health authority identity
card.

External requirement
Thesystem shall implement patient privacy provisions as set out in HStan-03-2006-priv.

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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 16

Portability Percentage of target dependent statements Number of target

systems
 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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 DOMAIN REQUIREMENTS

• The system’s operational domain imposes requirements on the system.

For example, a train control system has to take into account the braking characteristics in different
weather conditions.
• Domain requirements 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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 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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 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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USERS OF A REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT

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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 thesoftware.

Glossary This should define the technical terms used in the document. You should
not make assumptions about the experience or expertise of thereader.

User requirements Here, you describe the services provided for the user. The nonfunctional system
definition 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.

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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 behighlighted.
THE STRUCTURE OF A REQUIREMENTS
DOCUMENT
Chapter Description

System requirements This should describe the functional and nonfunctional requirements in more detail. If
specification necessary, further detail may also be added to the nonfunctional requirements.
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 thesystem.

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.
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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 soon.
 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
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formal specification. They cannot check that it represents what they want and
are reluctant to accept it as a systemcontract
 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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 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.
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. 30
 A STRUCTURED SPECIFICATION OF A
REQUIREMENT FOR AN INSULIN PUMP

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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 CompDose = 0

rate of increase
decreasing
((r2 – r1) < (r1 – r0))
Sugar level increasing and rate CompDose =
of round ((r2 – r1)/4)
increase stable or If rounded result = 0 then CompDose =
increasing ((r2 – r1) ≥ (r1 – MinimumDose 34
r0))
 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING PROCESSES

• The processes used for RE vary widely depending on the application domain, the people
involved and the organisation developing the requirements.
• However, there are a number of generic activities common to all processes
▪ Requirements elicitation;
▪ Requirements analysis;
▪ Requirements validation;
▪ Requirements management.
• In practice, RE is an iterative activity in which these processes are interleaved.
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A SPIRAL VIEW OF THE REQUIREMENTS
ENGINEERING PROCESS

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 REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION AND
ANALYSIS
• Sometimes called requirements elicitation or requirements discovery.
• Involves technical staff working with customers to find out about the application domain,
the services that the system should provide and the system’s operational constraints.
• May involve end-users, managers, engineers involved in maintenance, domain experts,
trade unions, etc. These are called stakeholders.

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 PROBLEMS OF REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS

• Stakeholders don’t know what they really want.

• Stakeholders express requirements in their own terms.
• Different stakeholders may have conflicting requirements.
• Organisational and political factors may influence the system requirements.
• The requirements change during the analysis process. New stakeholders may emerge and the
business environment may change.

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THE REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION AND
ANALYSIS PROCESS

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 REQUIREMENTS DISCOVERY

• The process of gathering information about the required and existing systems and
distilling the user and system requirements from this information.
• Interaction is with system stakeholders from managers to external regulators.
• Systems normally have a range of stakeholders.

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 STAKEHOLDERS IN THE MHC-PMS
• Patients whose information is recorded in the system.
• Doctors who are responsible for assessing and treating patients.
• Nurses who coordinate the consultations with doctors and administer some treatments.
• Medical receptionists who manage patients’ appointments.
• IT staff who are responsible for installing and maintaining the system.
• A medical ethics manager who must ensure that the system meets current ethical
guidelines for patient care.
• Health care managers who obtain management information from the system.
• Medical records staff who are responsible for ensuring that system information can be
maintained and preserved, and that record keeping procedures have been properly
implemented. 41
 INTERVIEWING
Formal or informalinterviews with stakeholders are part of most RE processes.
Types of interview
• Closed interviews based on pre-determined list of questions
• Open interviews where various issues are explored with stakeholders.
• Effective interviewing
• Be open-minded, avoid pre-conceived ideas about the requirements and are willing to
listen to stakeholders.
• Prompt the interviewee to get discussions going using a springboard question, a
requirements proposal, or by working together on a prototype system.

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 SCENARIOS

• Scenarios are real-life examples of how a system can be used.

They should include
▪ A description of the starting situation;
▪ A description of the normal flow of events;
▪ A description of what can go wrong;
▪ Information about other concurrent activities;
▪ A description of the state when the scenario finishes.
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 USE CASES

• Use-cases are a scenario based technique in the UML which identify the
actors in an interaction and which describe the interaction itself.
• A set of use cases should describe all possible interactions with the
system.
• High-level graphical model supplemented by more detailed tabular
• description (see Chapter 5).
• Sequence diagrams may be used to add detail to use-cases
by showing the sequence of event processing in the system.
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USE CASES FOR THE MHC-PMS

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 ETHNOGRAPHY
• A social scientist spends a considerable time observing and analysing
how people actually work.
• People do not have to explain or articulate their work.
• Social and organisational factors of importance may be observed.
• Ethnographic studies have shown that work is usually richer and more
complex than suggested by simple system models.

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 REQUIREMENTS VALIDATION

• Concerned with demonstrating that the requirements define the system

that the customer really wants.
• Requirements error costs are high so validation is very important
Fixing a requirements error after delivery may cost up to 100 times the
cost of fixing an implementation error.

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 REQUIREMENTS CHECKING
Validity. Does the system provide the functions which best support the
customer’s needs?
Consistency. Are there any requirements conflicts?
Completeness. Are all functions required by the customer included?
Realism. Can the requirements be implemented given available
budget and technology
Verifiability. Can the requirements be checked?

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REQUIREMENTS VALIDATION TECHNIQUES
Requirements reviews
• Systematic manual analysis of the requirements.
Prototyping
• Using an executable model of the system to check requirements.
• Covered in Chapter 2.
Test-case generation
• Developing tests for requirements to check testability.
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REQUIREMENTS EVOLUTION

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Any Questions

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