Requirements Specifications Today: Homework #1 due For next class: Pressman 11; SRD Team Status Reports Requirements Process (continued) Bio Break ( 5 minutes ) System Requirements Document Inspections

Why are Requirements Important? Results from Standish Group Survey (1994): (350 companies; 8000 software projects) % of software projects canceled before completion: 31% % of large software projects on-schedule & on-budget: 9% 69% of failures due to: –incomplete requirements: 13.1% –System no longer needed: 7.5% –Lack of executive support: 9.3% –Lack of planning: 8.1% –Lack of user involvement: 12.4% –Unrealistic expectations: 9.9% –Changing requirements & specs.: 8.7%

Requirements Process Elicitation Analysis & Negotiation Specification Models Validation Management

Requirements Elicitation Scope issues Communication issues Change issues Pressman’s checklist: –Feasibility, people, technical environment, key constraints, elicitation methods, variety of pts. of view, identify candidates for prototyping, usage scenarios

Requirements Analysis / Negotiation Map requirements to objectives? Right level of detail? Essential or “gold plating”? Clear scope / bounds of each requirement? Requirement conflicts? Technically achievable? Testable requirements?

System Modeling Flow charts Input, processing, output UI (See Donna’s methodology for projects)

Requirements Validation Formal technical review –Include: engineers, customers, users, “stakeholders” Does everyone understand the requirements the same way? Quantified requirements? Bounded requirements? Dependencies identified? Can we map the requirements to: –Objectives –System models / other documents –Traceability tables