Rationale for requirements engineering

• Problems in developing IT systems
• The costs of errors
• Knowledge types – explicit and tacit
• Definition of a ‘requirement’
• Hierarchy of requirements
• Characteristics of requirements engineering
• A framework for requirements engineering

The role of the analyst

• Stakeholders in requirements engineering
• Roles and responsibilities
• User analysis

Requirements planning and management

• The importance of planning
• Project initiation and the project initiation document
• Requirements management

Requirements elicitation 1 – interviewing

• Introduction to elicitation techniques
• Interview preparation
• Structure of an interview
• Documenting the interview

Requirements elicitation 2 – workshops

• What is a workshop?
• The benefits – and limitations – of a workshop
• Workshop roles and responsibilities
• Preparing for the workshop
• Techniques to elicit information
• Techniques for documenting workshop results

Requirements elicitation 3 – supplementary techniques

• Observation, ethnographic studies and STROBE
• Quantitative techniques – activity sampling
• Document analysis
• Record searching
• Questionnaires
• Special purpose records

Documenting requirements

• What should be documented?
• Contents of the requirements document
• The requirements catalogue

Requirements analysis 1 – modelling the processes

• What are we analysing and why?
• Characteristics of good requirements
• Framework for requirements analysis
• Use case diagrams
• Scope definition/re-definition
• Checking use cases against requirements
• The use of a context diagram

Requirements analysis 2 – modelling the data

• Objects and classes – concepts
• Classes and attributes
• Associations and multiplicity
• Building a class diagram
• Using class diagrams to confirm business rules and data requirements
• Checking models for consistency and completeness
• The CRUD matrix

Requirements analysis 3 – categorisation and organisation

• Organising requirements into a hierarchy
• Categorising requirements – functional, nonfunctional,
• technical and general
• Structuring the requirements catalogue

Requirements analysis 4 – necessity and feasibility checking

• Checking the relevance of requirements to business goals
• Assessing the feasibility (business, technical, financial) of requirements

Requirements analysis 5 – quality control

• Checking requirements against quality criteria
• Identifying conflicting requirements
• Resolving requirements conflicts – negotiating skills

Requirements analysis 6 – testability of requirements

• Identifying acceptance criteria
• The concept of business tolerances

Scenarios and prototyping

• Purpose and use – for elicitation, clarification and validation
• Developing scenarios
• Diagrammatic approaches to scenario modelling
• Use case descriptions to document scenarios
• Rationale for prototyping
• Throwaway versus evolutionary prototyping
• The prototyping process
• Scope and fidelity of prototypes
• Dangers of prototyping

Requirements management – recap

• Recap on features of requirements management
• Requirements traceability – importance and processes
• Baselining and version control
• The change control process
• Requirements re-use
• Support tools (Computer Aided Software Engineering)
• Requirements patterns

Validating requirements

• The place of validation in the requirements engineering process
• Validation versus verification
• Issues that can arise at validation
• Requirements validation process and the review meeting
• Attributes to be checked by reviewers
• Use of prototyping to validate requirements
• The importance of sign-off

Delivering the requirements

• The business case and the project lifecycle
• Approaches to solution delivery – build versus buy
• Development lifecycles
• From analysis to design
• Post-implementation review and benefits confirmation
• Use of requirements in system maintenance