Requirements Engineering Ing. Athanasios Podaras, PhD 2015-2016

Content 4 Top reasons of Project Failure (www.pmi.org) Requirements Engineering Requirement Analysis Topics Project Scope Types of Requirements Requiremement Analysis Issues (Problems) Techniques Utilized Conceptual Content

4 Top reasons of Project Failure The top four factors associated with project failure are: Poor end user/customer involvement (stakeholders) Poor executive management support Improper planning Unclear statement of requirements

Requirements Engineering “A subdiscipline of systems engineering and software engineering that is concerned with determining the goals, functions, and constraints of hardware and software systems.“ (Laplante, 2007)

Conceptual Content Conceptually, requirements analysis includes three types of activity: Eliciting requirements: the task of communicating with customers and users to determine what their requirements are. This is sometimes also called requirements gathering. Analysing requirements: determining whether the stated requirements are unclear, incomplete, ambiguous, or contradictory, and then resolving these issues.  Recording requirements: Requirements might be documented in various forms, such as natural-language documents, use cases, user stories, or process specifications.

Requirement Analysis Topics Stakeholder identification Stakeholder interviews Contract Requirements List (not very successful in practice, abstract) JAD (Joint Application Development) Prototype Use Cases (UML)

Project Scope Statement Project teams choosing to bypass the creation of a Project Scope statement are often operating under false assumptions, such as: “We talked about the scope when we kicked off the project, so people already understand the scope.” “We have a small project team, so everyone is already aligned on what we are doing and why.” ‘We have to implement a solution quickly, so we don’t have time to document scope.”

Project Scope Deliverables Objectives (business and project) Context diagram---differentiating business processes and external entities Project constraints Critical success factors Project assumptions

Stakeholders anyone who operates the system (normal and maintenance operators)  anyone who benefits from the system (functional, political, financial and social beneficiaries)  anyone involved in purchasing or procuring the system. organizations which regulate aspects of the system (financial, safety, and other regulators) people or organizations opposed to the system (negative stakeholders- Misuse case) organizations responsible for systems which interface with the system under design those organizations who integrate horizontally with the organization for whom the analyst is designing the system

Types of Requirements

Other Types of Requirements Performance Requirements Customer Requirements Design Requirements Derived Requirements Allocated Requirements

Issues and Problems of Requirement Engineering Users do not understand what they want or users don't have a clear idea of their requirements Users will not commit to a set of written requirements Users insist on new requirements after the cost and schedule have been fixed Communication with users is slow Users often do not participate in reviews or are incapable of doing so Users are technically unsophisticated Users do not understand the development process Users do not know about present technology

References http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Publications/ADV06NA08.ashx (2008) Phillip A. Laplante (2007)What Every Engineer Should Know about Software Engineering. Page 44 Wiegers, Karl E. (2003). Software Requirements(2nd ed.). Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1879-8 http://www.processimpact.com