Subject: Software Engineering Assignment

Guidelines for Identifying Systems Requirements

Characteristics of a requirements definition:

1. Precise and easily understand by users.

2. Complete. No necessary information should be missing. However, this completeness must be within a limit or scope and cannot be over specified.

3. Modifiable. People are able to revise the requirement when necessary and maintain a history of changes made to each requirement.

4. Traceable. Requirements are uniquely labeled and are written in a structured, fine-grained way, as opposed to large, narrative paragraphs or bullet lists.

Guidelines for Identifying Systems Requirements:

1. Define the requirements from the developer’s perspective.

2. Make sure they are complete and understandable by developers.

3. Use the active voice and keep statements short. Avoid long narrative paragraphs.

4. Regarding to the level of granularity, write each requirement in a way that can be tested. If a small number of related tests to verify correct implementation of a requirement, it is probably written at the right level of detail. If many different kinds of tests are envisioned, perhaps several requirements have been lumped together and should be separated.

5. Avoid multiple requirements aggregated into a single statement. Conjunctions like "and" and "or" in a requirement suggest that several requirements have been combined.

6. Make the requirement concisely and avoid redundancy. The multiple instances of the requirement may cause modification difficulties and inconsistency issues.

7. Write requirements at a consistent level of detail throughout the document.

8. Use terms consistently and define them in a glossary or data dictionary.