The Importance of Software Requirements

The software development life cycle

• Defining and differentiating between requirement types
• Locating requirement sources
• Development approaches

Presenting software requirements

• Structuring the requirements document
• Requirements components: text, diagrams, data

Structuring Your Project

Tuning your methodology to your project size

• Matching the process to small, medium and complex systems
• Differentiating agile from standard techniques

Analysing stakeholder input

• Identifying and prioritising stakeholders
• Eliciting initial requirements from input documents
• Iterating requirements collaboratively

Applying the requirements process

• Elicitation
• Analysis
• Specification
• Validation
• IEEE
• SWEBOK
• The Unified Process

Capturing and Refining Use Cases

Writing user stories

• Scripting user stories and brief versions of use cases
• Iteration and progressive elaboration of use cases

Creating structured use cases

• Use cases as behavioural requirements
• Identifying stakeholders and actors
• Naming and scoping use cases
• Writing scenarios: main and alternatives
• Adding preconditions and guarantees

Iterating use cases

• Refining use cases with stakeholders
• Factoring common steps
• Discovering extension scenarios
• Verifying use case completeness

Organising use cases

• Diagramming scenarios with UML
• Choosing between free text and formal use case notation

Generating Interface Requirements

Integrating interface requirements

• Supporting use cases with user interface mock-ups
• Comparing types of interface

Producing interface models

• Storyboarding and prototyping
• Modelling interfaces with UML state diagrams and navigation maps

Data Requirements

Analysing data requirements

• Exploring the use cases and the interface
• Determining data business rules

Creating a requirements data model

• Representing data models with UML class diagrams
• Entities
• Attributes
• Associations
• Adding associations' multiplicity
• Maintaining the glossary

Nonfunctional Requirements

Gathering nonfunctional requirements

• Obtaining volumetrics
• Classifying nonfunctional requirements using FURPS

Documenting nonfunctional requirements

• System reliability: Availability, Accuracy and Failures
• Addressing the "-ilities"

Validating Requirements and Producing Test Scenarios

Performing requirements validation

• Achieving well-formed requirements through validation
• Reviewing requirements with walkthroughs
• Verifying requirements with inspections

Generating use case tests from requirements

• Ensuring testability of requirements
• Extrapolating test scripts and test scenarios from requirements
• Relating requirements to system and UA testing

Managing Changing Requirements

• Developing a process for managing requirements
• Negotiating changes using a Change Control Board (CCB)
• Confirming requirements through a traceability matrix