Requirements gathering Software Engineering Requirements gathering

Software Development Phases Requirements gathering Analysis Design System design Object design Development Testing Release Maintenance

Requirements Gathering In this phase of the design process you must work with the user to determine what the program must do You will also conduct research and start a bit of brainstorming about what your program will do There are two types of requirements: Functional and non-functional In FRC you would communicate with the rest of the team, especially the design department to determine what actions the robot must perform User stories and use cases These are essentially what actions the robot needs to perform and how the user/environment would initiate or end them

Types of Requirements Functional requirements are things that the program must do, and are normally represented as user stories which are just actions Non-functional requirements are things that the program does but are not as important as the functional requirements. An example of a non-functional requirement would be that the SmartDashboard interface must be able to clearly display the data from the sensors of the robot in an easy to view fashion

User Stories A typical user story represents a single action that the program will do In a program there are typically one or more epics An epic is a large user story which represents an entire functionality of the application An example in FRC would be that the robot must be able to score into the high goal, or the robot must be able to cross a defense Each epic contains smaller user stories which represent specific actions An example of a user story would be that the robot must be able to automatically align with the high goal

User Story Format The typical format for a user story is as follows: As a [type of user] I want to be able to [action] so that [reason] For example: As a driver I want to be able to automatically align the robot with the target so that I don’t have to guess if the robot is aligned properly. User stories also have conversations Conversations are specific points of the user story which state the conditions of what makes the user story happen For example with the alignment user story above, the conversation could be The robot will align within 1 degree of the target

User Story Activity Identify the epics and user stories for this following problem. Include conversations for your user stories. Assume your team wants to do all of the actions in the game. “This year’s challenge is water games. Robots can swim through underwater hoops, positioned around the pool in a circular pattern to score points. There are 5 hoops, each worth 10 points. Robots can place mines in front of the hoops to stop robots from passing through, but robots can grab mine deactivation kits from the center of the pool and deactivate the mines blocking their path. In the last 30 seconds, robots can swim to the bottom of the pool and locate the hidden treasure which they can then send to the surface to shoot it into the pirate ship.”