Requirements engineering

About: Requirements engineering is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11209 publications have been published within this topic receiving 202218 citations.

Requirements engineering: a roadmap

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the field of software systems requirements engineering (RE). It describes the main areas of RE practice, and highlights some key open research issues for the future.

Goal-directed requirements acquisition

Abstract: Requirements analysis includes a preliminary acquisition step where a global model for the specification of the system and its environment is elaborated This model, called requirements model, involves concepts that are currently not supported by existing formal specification languages, such as goals to be achieved, agents to be assigned, alternatives to be negotiated, etc The paper presents an approach to requirements acquisition which is driven by such higher-level concepts Requirements models are acquired as instances of a conceptual meta-model The latter can be represented as a graph where each node captures an abstraction such as, eg, goal, action, agent, entity, or event, and where the edges capture semantic links between such abstractions Well-formedness properties on nodes and links constrain their instances-that is, elements of requirements models Requirements acquisition processes then correspond to particular ways of traversing the meta-model graph to acquire appropriate instances of the various nodes and links according to such constraints Acquisition processes are governed by strategies telling which way to follow systematically in that graph; at each node specific tactics can be used to acquire the corresponding instances The paper describes a significant portion of the meta-model related to system goals, and one particular acquisition strategy where the meta-model is traversed backwards from such goals The meta-model and the strategy are illustrated by excerpts of a university library system

Towards modelling and reasoning support for early-phase requirements engineering

Abstract: Requirements are usually understood as stating what a system is supposed to do, as apposed to how it should do it. However, understanding the organizational context and rationales (the "Whys") that lead up to systems requirements can be just as important for the ongoing success of the system. Requirements modelling techniques can be used to help deal with the knowledge and reasoning needed in this earlier phase of requirements engineering. However most existing requirements techniques are intended more for the later phase of requirements engineering, which focuses on completeness, consistency, and automated verification of requirements. In contrast, the early phase aims to model and analyze stakeholder interests and how they might be addressed, or compromised, by various system-and-environment alternatives. This paper argues, therefore, that a different kind of modelling and reasoning support is needed for the early phase. An outline of the i* framework is given as an example of a step in this direction. Meeting scheduling is used as a domain example.

Goal-oriented requirements engineering: a guided tour

Abstract: Goals capture, at different levels of abstraction, the various objectives the system under consideration should achieve. Goal-oriented requirements engineering is concerned with the use of goals for eliciting, elaborating, structuring, specifying, analyzing, negotiating, documenting, and modifying requirements. This area has received increasing attention. The paper reviews various research efforts undertaken along this line of research. The arguments in favor of goal orientation are first briefly discussed. The paper then compares the main approaches to goal modeling, goal specification and goal-based reasoning in the many activities of the requirements engineering process. To make the discussion more concrete, a real case study is used to suggest what a goal-oriented requirements engineering method may look like. Experience, with such approaches and tool support are briefly discussed as well.

Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques

Abstract: Requirements Engineering Processes and Techniques Why this book was written The value of introducing requirements engineering to trainee software engineers is to equip them for the real world of software and systems development. What is involved in Requirements Engineering? As a discipline, newly emerging from software engineering, there are a range of views on where requirements engineering starts and finishes and what it should encompass. This book offers the most comprehensive coverage of the requirements engineering process to date - from initial requirements elicitation through to requirements validation. How and Which methods and techniques should you use? As there is no one catch-all technique applicable to all types of system, requirements engineers need to know about a range of different techniques. Tried and tested techniques such as data-flow and object-oriented models are covered as well as some promising new ones. They are all based on real systems descriptions to demonstrate the applicability of the approach. Who should read it? Principally written for senior undergraduate and graduate students studying computer science, software engineering or systems engineering, this text will also be helpful for those in industry new to requirements engineering. Accompanying Website: http: //www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/resources/re Visit our Website: http://www.wiley.com/college/wws