Software Development Fundamentals: Requirements Management, Study notes of Software Project Management

Download Software Development Fundamentals: Requirements Management and more Study notes Software Project Management in PDF only on Docsity! Software Project Management (CS615) 92 LECTURE # 13 2. Software Development Fundamentals Technical Fundamentals 2.11 Requirements Management  Preview Software requirements engineering is a process of discovery, refinement, modeling and specification. The system requirements and role allocated to software-initially established by the system engineer-are refined in detail. Models of the required data information and control flow and operational behavior are created. Alternative solutions are analyzed and a complete analysis model is created. Requirements engineering is the systematic use of proven principles, techniques, languages, and tools for the cost effective analysis, documentation, and on-going evolution of user needs and the specification of the external behavior of a system to satisfy those user needs. Notice that like all engineering disciplines, requirements engineering is not conducted in a sporadic random or otherwise haphazard fashion, but instead is the systematic use of proven approaches. Both the software engineer and customer take an active role in software requirements engineering-a set of activities that is often referred to as analysis. The customer attempts to reformulate a sometimes nebulous system-level description of data, function and behavior into concrete detail. The developer acts as interrogator, consultant, problem solver and negotiator. The overall role of Software in a larger system is identified during system engineering. However, it's necessary to take a harder look at software's role-to understand the specific requirements that must be achieved to build high-quality software. That's the job of software requirements analysis. To perform the job properly, you should follow a set of underlying concepts and principles. Generally, a software engineer performs requirements analysis However, for complex business applications a 'system analyst’ trained in the business aspects of the application domain may perform the task. If you don't analyze, it's highly likely that you'll build a very elegant software solution that solves the wrong problem. The result is wasted time and money, personal frustration and unhappy customers. docsity.com Software Project Management (CS615) 93 Data, functional, and behavioral requirements are identified by eliciting information from the customer. Requirements are refined and analyzed to assess their clarity, completeness, and consistency.  Requirements analysis Requirements analysis is a software engineering task that bridges the gap between system level requirements engineering and software design (Figure 1). Requirements engineering activities result in the specification of software's operational characteristics (function, data; and behavior), indicate software's interface with other system elements, and establish constraints that software must meet. Requirements analysis allows the software engineer (sometimes called analyst in this. role) to refine the software allocation and build models of the data, functional, and behavioral domains that will be treated by software. Requirements analysis provides the software designer with a representation of information, function, and behavior that can be translated to data, architectural, interface, and component-level designs. Finally, the requirements specification provides the developer and the customer with the means to assess quality once software is built. Figure 1: a bridge between system engineering and software design Software requirements analysis may be divided into five areas of effort: (1) Problem recognition, (2) Evaluation and synthesis, (3) Modeling (4) Specification, and (5) Review System Engineerin g Software Design Software Requirement s Analysis docsity.com