Lecture 3.1
Software Requirements :What, Why,
and Who.-Cont’d
Software Requirements
Requirements are…a specification of what should be
implemented. They are descriptions of how the system
should behave, or of a system property or attribute. They
may be a constraint on the development process of the
system.
Requirement Engineering Process
Requirements Development
■ Identifying the product’s expected user classes
■ Eliciting needs from individuals who represent each user class
■ Understanding user tasks and goals and the business objectives with which those tasks align
■ Analyzing the information received from users to distinguish their task goals from functional
requirements, nonfunctional requirements, business rules, suggested solutions, and extraneous
information
■ Allocating portions of the top-level requirements to software components defined in the
system architecture
■ Understanding the relative importance of quality attributes
■ Negotiating implementation priorities
■ Translating the collected user needs into written requirements specifications and models
■ Reviewing the documented requirements to ensure a common understanding of the users’
stated requirements and to correct any problems before the development group accepts them
Iteration is a key to requirements development success. Plan for multiple
cycles of exploring requirements, refining high-level requirements into details,
and confirming correctness with users
Requirements Management
Requirements management entails “establishing and maintaining an
agreement with the customer on the requirements for the software project”
■ Defining the requirements baseline (a snapshot in time representing the currently agreedupon body of requirements for a specific release)
■ Reviewing proposed requirements changes and evaluating the likely impact of each
change before approving it
■
Incorporating approved requirements changes into the project in a controlled way
■ Keeping project plans current with the requirements
■ Negotiating new commitments based on the estimated impact of requirements changes
■ Tracing individual requirements to their corresponding designs, source code, and test
cases
■ Tracking requirements status and change activity throughout the project
RE Process
RE within the Software development process
What is the right system to build ?
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Every Project Has Requirements
“The hardest single part of building a software system is
deciding precisely what to build. No other part of the
conceptual work is as difficult as establishing the detailed
technical requirements, including all the interfaces to
people, to machines, and to other software systems. No
other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if
done wrong. No other part is more difficult to rectify later”.
When Bad Requirements Happen to Nice People
• The major consequence of requirements problems is rework
• Rework can consume 30 to 50 percent of your total
development cost (Boehm and Papaccio 1988).
• requirements errors account for 70 to 85 percent of
the rework cost (Leffingwell1997).
• Imagine how different your life would be if you could
cut the rework effort in half! You could build products
faster, build more and better products in the same
amount of time, and perhaps even go home
occasionally.
Statistics from NIST Report
• NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has
published a comprehensive (309 pages) and very interesting
report on project statistics and experiences based on data
from a large number of software projects1
• 70% of the defects are introduced in the specification phase
• 30% are introduced later in the technical solution process
• Only 5% of the specification inadequacies are corrected in the
specification phase
• 95% are detected later in the project or after delivery where the cost
for correction on average is 22 times higher compared to a correction
directly during the specification effort
• The NIST report concludes that extensive testing is essential, however
testing detects the dominating specification errors late in the process
[1] http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-10.htm (May 2002)
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CHAOS Report (2004)1
[1] Standish Group Inc., 2004
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Why Focus on Requirements ?
• Distribution of Defects
Requirements
56%
Code
7%
• Distribution of Effort to Fix Defects
Other
10%
Requirements
82%
Code
Other
1%
4%
Design
13%
Design
27%
Source: Martin & Leffinwell
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Reason of Defects
• Insufficient User Involvement
• Creeping User Requirements
• Ambiguous Requirements
• Gold Plating
• Minimal Specification
• Overlooked User Classes
• Inaccurate Planning
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Progression since 1994
Success
Problem
Failure
Source: Standish Group Inc., 1994-2006
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Success Factors
Source: Standish Group Inc., 1995
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Problem Causes
Source: Standish Group Inc., 1995
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Managing Evolving Requirements
“Changing requirements is as certain as death and taxes”
Source: http://standishgroup.com/sample_research/PDFpages/extreme_chaos.pdf, 1999
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Benefits from a High-Quality Requirements Process
■ Fewer requirements defects
■ Reduced development rework
■ Fewer unnecessary features
■ Lower enhancement costs
■ Faster development
■ Fewer miscommunications
■ Reduced scope creep
■ Reduced project chaos
■ More accurate system-testing estimates
■ Higher customer and team member satisfaction
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Characteristics of Excellent Requirements
A. Requirement statement Characteristics
1. Complete
2. Correct
3. Feasible
4. Necessary
5. Prioritized
6. Unambiguous
7. Verifiable
B.
Requirement Specification Characteristics
1. Complete
2. Consistent
3. Modifiable
4. Traceable
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Requirements from the Customer’s Perspective
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Who Is the Customer
•
a customer is an individual or organization who derives
either direct or indirect benefit from a product.
• Software customers include those project stakeholders who
request, pay for, select, specify, use, or receive the output
generated by a software product.
• other project stakeholders include requirements analysts,
developers, testers, documentation writers, project managers,
support staff, legal staff, and marketing staff.
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The Customer-Development Partnership
• Excellent software products are the result of a well-executed
design based on excellent requirements.
• High-quality requirements result from effective
communication and collaboration between developers and
customers partnership.
• Too often, the relationship between development and
customers becomesadversarial.
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Requirements Bill of Rights for Software
Customers
• Right #1: To Expect Analysts to Speak Your Language
• Right #2: To Have Analysts Learn About Your Business and Objectives
• Right #3: To Expect Analysts to Write a Software Requirements
Specification
• Right #4: To Receive Explanations of Requirements Work Products
• Right #5: To Expect Analysts and Developers to Treat You with Respect
• Right #6: To Hear Ideas and Alternatives for Requirements and Their
Implementation
• Right #7: To Describe Characteristics That Make the Product Easy to Use
• Right #8: To Be Given Opportunities to Adjust Requirements to Permit
Reuse
• Right #9: To Receive Good-Faith Estimates of the Costs of Changes
• Right #10: To Receive a System That Meets Your Functional and Quality
Needs
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Requirements Bill of Responsibilities for Software
Customers
•
•
Responsibility #1: To Educate Analysts and Developers About Your Business
Responsibility #2: To Spend the Time to Provide and Clarify
Requirements
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Responsibility #3: To Be Specific and Precise About Requirements
Responsibility #4: To Make Timely Decisions
Responsibility #5: To Respect a Developer’s Assessment of Cost and Feasibility
Responsibility #6: To Set Requirement Priorities
Responsibility #7: To Review Requirements Documents and Evaluate Prototypes
Responsibility #8: To Promptly Communicate Changes to the
requirements
Responsibility #9: To Follow the Development Organization’s Change Process
Responsibility #10: To Respect the Requirements Engineering Processes
the Analysts Use
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meaningful baselining process
A meaningful baselining process gives all the major stakeholders confidence in
the following ways:
■ Customer management is confident that the project scope won’t explode out of
control, because customers manage the scope change decisions.
■ User representatives have confidence that development will work with them to
deliver the right system, even if the representatives didn’t think of every
requirement before construction began.
■ Development management has confidence because the development team has
a business partner who will keep the project focused on achieving its objectives
and will work with development to balance schedule, cost, functionality, and
quality.
■ Requirements analysts are confident because they know that they
can manage changes to the project in a way that will keep chaos to
a minimum.
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