Software Requirements: User and System Requirements in Software Engineering, Papers of Software Engineering

Download Software Requirements: User and System Requirements in Software Engineering and more Papers Software Engineering in PDF only on Docsity! ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 1 Software Requirements ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 2 Objectives ● To introduce the concepts of user and system requirements ● To describe functional and non-functional requirements ● To explain how software requirements may be organised in a requirements document ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 5 What is a requirement? ● It may range from a high-level abstract statement of a service or of a system constraint to a detailed mathematical functional specification. ● This is inevitable as requirements may serve a dual function • May be the basis for a bid for a contract - therefore must be open to interpretation; • May be the basis for the contract itself - therefore must be defined in detail; • Both these statements may be called requirements. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 6 Requirements abstraction (Davis) “If a company wishes to let a contract for a large software development project, it must define its needs in a sufficiently abstract way that a solution is not pre-defined. The requirements must be written so that several contractors can bid for the contract, offering, perhaps, different ways of meeting the client organisation’s needs. Once a contract has been awarded, the contractor must write a system definition for the client in more detail so that the client understands and can validate what the software will do. Both of these documents may be called the requirements document for the system.” ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 7 Types of requirement ● User requirements • Statements in natural language plus diagrams of the services the system provides and its operational constraints. Written for customers. ● System requirements • A structured document setting out detailed descriptions of the system’s functions, services and operational constraints. Defines what should be implemented so may be part of a contract between client and contractor. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 10 Functional and non-functional requirements ● Functional requirements • Statements of services the system should provide, how the system should react to particular inputs and how the system should behave in particular situations. ● Non-functional requirements • constraints on the services or functions offered by the system such as timing constraints, constraints on the development process, standards, etc. ● Domain requirements • Requirements that come from the application domain of the system and that reflect characteristics of that domain. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 11 Functional requirements ● Describe functionality or system services. ● Depend on the type of software, expected users and the type of system where the software is used. ● Functional user requirements may be high-level statements of what the system should do but functional system requirements should describe the system services in detail. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 12 The LIBSYS system ● A library system that provides a single interface to a number of databases of articles in different libraries. ● Users can search for, download and print these articles for personal study. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 15 Requirements completeness and consistency ● In principle, requirements should be both complete and consistent. ● Complete • They should include descriptions of all facilities required. ● Consistent • There should be no conflicts or contradictions in the descriptions of the system facilities. ● In practice, it is impossible to produce a complete and consistent requirements document. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 16 Non-functional requirements ● These define system properties and constraints e.g. reliability, response time and storage requirements. Constraints are I/O device capability, system representations, etc. ● Process requirements may also be specified mandating a particular CASE system, programming language or development method. ● Non-functional requirements may be more critical than functional requirements. If these are not met, the system is useless. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 17 Non-functional classifications ● Product requirements • Requirements which specify that the delivered product must behave in a particular way e.g. execution speed, reliability, etc. ● Organisational requirements • Requirements which are a consequence of organisational policies and procedures e.g. process standards used, implementation requirements, etc. ● External requirements • Requirements which arise from factors which are external to the system and its development process e.g. interoperability requirements, legislative requirements, etc. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 20 Goals and requirements ● Non-functional requirements may be very difficult to state precisely and imprecise requirements may be difficult to verify. ● Goal • A general intention of the user such as ease of use. ● Verifiable non-functional requirement • A statement using some measure that can be objectively tested. ● Goals are helpful to developers as they convey the intentions of the system users. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 21 Examples ● A system goal • The system should be easy to use by experienced controllers and should be organised in such a way that user errors are minimised. ● A verifiable non-functional requirement • Experienced controllers shall be able to use all the system functions after a total of two hours training. After this training, the average number of errors made by experienced users shall not exceed two per day. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 22 Requirements measures Property Measure Speed Processed transactions/second User/Event response time Screen refresh time Size M Bytes Number of ROM chips Ease of use Training time Number of help frames Reliability Mean time to failure Probability of unavailability Rate of failure occurrence Availability Robustness Time to restart after failure Percentage of events causing failure Probability of data corruption on failure Portability Percentage of target dependent statements Number of target systems ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 25 Library system domain requirements ● There shall be a standard user interface to all databases which shall be based on the Z39.50 standard. ● Because of copyright restrictions, some documents must be deleted immediately on arrival. Depending on the user’s requirements, these documents will either be printed locally on the system server for manually forwarding to the user or routed to a network printer. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 26 Train protection system ● The deceleration of the train shall be computed as: • Dtrain = Dcontrol + Dgradient where Dgradient is 9.81ms2 * compensated gradient/alpha and where the values of 9.81ms2 /alpha are known for different types of train. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 27 Domain requirements problems ● Understandability • Requirements are expressed in the language of the application domain; • This is often not understood by software engineers developing the system. ● Implicitness • Domain specialists understand the area so well that they do not think of making the domain requirements explicit. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 30 LIBSYS requirement 4..5 LIBSYS shall provide a financial accounting system that maintains records of all payments made by users of the system. System managers may configure this system so that regular users may receive discounted rates. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 31 Editor grid requirement 2.6 Grid facilities To assist in the positioning of entities on a diagram, the user may turn on a grid in either centimetres or inches, via an option on the control panel. Initially, the grid is off. The grid may be turned on and off at any time during an editing session and can be toggled between inches and centimetres at any time. A grid option will be provided on the reduce-to-fit view but the number of grid lines shown will be reduced to avoid filling the smaller diagram with grid lines. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 32 Requirement problems ● Database requirements includes both conceptual and detailed information • Describes the concept of a financial accounting system that is to be included in LIBSYS; • However, it also includes the detail that managers can configure this system - this is unnecessary at this level. ● Grid requirement mixes three different kinds of requirement • Conceptual functional requirement (the need for a grid); • Non-functional requirement (grid units); • Non-functional UI requirement (grid switching). ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 35 System requirements ● More detailed specifications of system functions, services and constraints than user requirements. ● They are intended to be a basis for designing the system. ● They may be incorporated into the system contract. ● System requirements may be defined or illustrated using system models discussed in Chapter 8. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 36 Requirements and design ● In principle, requirements should state what the system should do and the design should describe how it does this. ● In practice, requirements and design are inseparable • A system architecture may be designed to structure the requirements; • The system may inter-operate with other systems that generate design requirements; • The use of a specific design may be a domain requirement. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 37 Problems with NL specification ● Ambiguity • The readers and writers of the requirement must interpret the same words in the same way. NL is naturally ambiguous so this is very difficult. ● Over-flexibility • The same thing may be said in a number of different ways in the specification. ● Lack of modularisation • NL structures are inadequate to structure system requirements. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 40 Form-based specifications ● Definition of the function or entity. ● Description of inputs and where they come from. ● Description of outputs and where they go to. ● Indication of other entities required. ● Pre and post conditions (if appropriate). ● The side effects (if any) of the function. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 41 Form-based node specification Insulin Pump/Control Software/SRS/3.3.2 Function Compute insulin dose: Safe sugar level Description Computes the dose of insulin to be delivered when the current measured sugar level is in the safe zone between 3 and 7 units. Inputs Current sugar reading (r2), the previous two readings (r0 and r1) Source Current sugar reading from sensor. Other readings from memory. Outputs CompDose – the dose in insulin to be delivered Destination Main control loop Action: CompDose is zero if the sugar level is stable or falling or if the level is increasing but the rate of increase is decreasing. If the level is increasing and the rate of increase is increasing, then CompDose is computed by dividing the difference between the current sugar level and the previous level by 4 and rounding the result. If the result, is rounded to zero then CompDose is set to the minimum dose that can be delivered. Requires Two previous readings so that the rate of change of sugar level can be computed. Pre-condition The insulin reservoir contains at least the maximum allowed single dose of insulin.. Post-condition r0 is replaced by r1 then r1 is replaced by r2 Side-effects None ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 42 Tabular specification ● Used to supplement natural language. ● Particularly useful when you have to define a number of possible alternative courses of action. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 45 Sequence diagrams ● These show the sequence of events that take place during some user interaction with a system. ● You read them from top to bottom to see the order of the actions that take place. ● Cash withdrawal from an ATM • Validate card; • Handle request; • Complete transaction. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 46 Sequence diagram of ATM withdrawal ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 47 Interface specification ● Most systems must operate with other systems and the operating interfaces must be specified as part of the requirements. ● Three types of interface may have to be defined • Procedural interfaces; • Data structures that are exchanged; • Data representations. ● Formal notations are an effective technique for interface specification. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 50 Users of a requirements document ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 51 IEEE requirements standard ● Defines a generic structure for a requirements document that must be instantiated for each specific system. • Introduction. • General description. • Specific requirements. • Appendices. • Index. ©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 6 Slide 52 Requirements document structure ● Preface ● Introduction ● Glossary ● User requirements definition ● System architecture ● System requirements specification ● System models ● System evolution ● Appendices ● Index