Introduction

Requirements engineering is practiced by many, mastered by surprisingly few. And yet, the payoff from achieving excellence in this field of project activity is large.

Requirements engineering may be considered to embrace:

• the recording (specification) of requirements, as requirements are first created
• the capture of requirements not already recorded, and the validation of requirements which exist, whether or not they have been recorded, or have been recorded adequately (requirements analysis)
• the re-specification of requirements which have been inadequately specified
• the maintenance of traceability between different expressions of the same requirement
• the maintenance of traceability between requirements of different objects in design
• the management of the above activities.

The course recognizes throughout, other dimensions of the problem domain, including measures of effectiveness (MOEs), goals, and related value relationships.

This course first establishes fundamental principles and relationships as they relate to requirements (plus MOEs, etc), with emphasis on how requirements come into existence: the relationship between requirements and design.

The course then addresses the techniques used to capture, validate and gain a complete understanding of requirements, both initially, and at all subsequent stages of a system life cycle.

The course then addresses in detail the conversion of individual requirements into effective requirements specifications. The course focuses on the structure of requirements specification, based on principles and without reference to specific languages.

This course, available world-wide on an in-house basis, and in some countries on a public basis, is the language-independent equivalent of Project Performance International's 5-day public course in Requirements Analysis and Specification Writing (one day of this latter course focuses on English language requirements specification).

Who Should Attend This Course?

Being independent of specific problem domains and solution technologies, and being language independent, this course is relevant to a wide range of enterprises, and roles within those enterprises, worldwide.

Relevant application sectors include defence, aerospace, telecommunications, public infrastructure, entertainment and medicine. Relevant organization types include military, public sector, contractors, product-oriented firms, consultants, research and development enterprises.

Requirements Engineering is designed for personnel who specify, perform, control or manage the development of small to large technology-based systems where successful outcomes are important. The course will be of particular value to people with job titles such as project manager, product manager, engineering manager, requirements manager, requirements engineer, specification writer, systems engineer, software systems engineer, software engineer, design engineer, test engineer, hardware engineer, and similar engineering and acquisition job titles.

Many other participants in the technical and management processes of transforming a need into an effective, technology-based solution will benefit from this course.

People whose primary interest is requirements expressed in the English language may prefer to take Project Performance International's companion 5-day course 'Requirements Analysis and Specification Writing', within which some hours are devoted to English language requirements specification constructs.

Training Methods and Materials

The course is delivered in English using a mixture of formal presentation and an extensive set of individual/group workshops. Language support may be available for deliveries of the course in some countries - see country-specific course descriptions. The requirements analysis workshops carry a single system through a number of requirements analysis activities, simulating, as closely as possible, the conduct of a real requirements analysis. The specification writing workshops provide hands-on practice and guidance in structuring requirements specifications. Commendations on the high degree of effectiveness of this delivery approach are available on request.

Participants receive comprehensive course notes, two workbooks, each containing workshop exercises, numerous worked examples, a Requirements Engineering Resources CD-ROM, mainly in English, containing a wealth of valuable information (handbooks, templates, guides, papers, reports, standards, etc) and a variety of other reference materials and resources.

Training Objective

It is expected that, on completion of the course, participants will:

• understand the principles of requirements engineering
• understand the role of requirements analysis (requirements capture and requirements validation) in achieving successful project outcomes
• understand the concept of requirements quality. Be able to measure the quality of a requirements specification, increasingly more accurately as skills in requirements analysis improve through on-the-job experience
• understand the basic types of requirements (functional, performance, external interface, environmental, resource, etc), and the significance of these distinctions. Be able to recognise requirements of each type, a prerequisite for effective specification writing
• be able to perform, at a basic level of skill at least, the techniques which collectively constitute an effective and efficient methodology for performing requirements analysis.
• have some basic capability to tailor the application of the techniques of requirements analysis to different scenarios
• be capable of extensive further on-the-job learning, within a sound conceptual framework, in the field of requirements analysis
• understand the role of specification writing in achieving successful project outcomes
• understand the principles of good specification structure, for specification of systems, software and services
• be familiar with the range of public domain standards for different types of requirements specifications.

Requirements Engineering Course Outline

1. Why Emphasise Requirements?

• Issues and terminology
• Lessons from real projects

2. Requirements Within the System Life Cycle

• The Origin of Requirements
• Concept of the system boundary
• The modelling boundary
• The systems engineering process
• Development of system architecture and detail design
• Requirements traceability
• Summary of terms relating to requirements
• Baselines and their use
• The waterfall life cycle paradigm
• Incremental acquisition/development
• Evolutionary acquisition/development
• The spiral model
• Workshop - requirements engineering principles
• Common requirements pitfalls in the system life cycle

3. What are Requirements?

• Definitions and views
• Relationship to Design
• Relationship to Baselines
• Names of requirements sets: stakeholder requirements, system requirements, technical requirements, etc.

4. Types of Requirements

• Why categorise requirements by type?
• Eight basic types
• Differences between requirements for hardware, software, services
• Non-requirements
• Workshop - categorising requirements by type (English language)
• Other categories - design drivers, critical, global, priority, importance, stability

5. The Quality of Requirements

• Correctness
• Completeness
• Consistency
• Clarity
• Non-ambiguity
• Traceability
• Testability
• Singularity
• Feasibility
• Freedom from product/process mix

6. Requirements Analysis Techniques

• Primary, Secondary, Tertiary stakeholders
• Initial assessment and planning
• Measuring requirements quality
• Methods of engaging in requirements dialogue
• Context analysis
• Workshop - context analysis (English language)
• Design requirements analysis
• States & Modes analysis
• Workshop - states and modes analysis (English language)
• Requirements parsing
• Workshop - parsing (English language)
• Functional analysis - needs analysis, operational analysis, use cases
• Workshop - functional analysis (English language)
• Rest of scenario analysis
• Workshop - rest of scenario analysis (English language)
• Out of range analysis
• Workshop - out-of-range (English language)
• ERA analysis
• Other constraints search
• Value analysis
• Workshop: building a system effectiveness model
• Verification requirements development
• Operational Concept Description
• Clean-up
• Special issues of the human interface
• Supplementary methods and notations
• Common pitfalls in requirements analysis

7. Coping with the Real World

• What to do when the user "doesn't know"
• How to respond to "moving goalposts"
• Protecting yourself from the communication chasm

8. Tool Support to Requirements Analysis

• Tools supporting requirements analysis
• Tools supporting requirements management
• Examples of available tools
• Common pitfalls in using tools

9. Requirements Verification

• Requirements reviews
• Use of metrics

10. Management of Requirements Analysis

• Management issues
• Using and managing "TBDs"
• Designing a requirements codification scheme
• Managing resolution of requirements issues
• Defining reviews and reports
• Risk management applied to the requirements phase
• Risk driven specifications

11. Transforming Requirements into Requirements Specifications

• What is a specification?
• How requirements specifications relate to requirements
• How requirements specifications relate to configuration baselines
• Using DIDs and templates
• Using a requirements database to automate specification production

12. Requirements Flowdown into Specifications

• The specification tree
• Special considerations for interface requirements

13. Specification Types and Formats

• Types of requirements specification
• IEEE specification standards
• US military and other international specification standards
• Score sheet for public domain specificaiton standards

14. Structuring Your Requirements Specifications

• What to put in the system requirements specification, the statement of work (or equivalent) and the conditions of contract
• Workshop - allocation of requirements to the specification, the statement of work and the conditions of contract
• Structuring a statement of work
• Structuring a system requirements specification
• Dealing with variants
• Workshop - structuring a specification to deal with variants
• States and modes
• Workshop - structuring a specification to deal with states and modes
  • functional versus design oriented specifications
  • differences
  • when to use each type
• Function and performance
• Workshop - classifying requirements as functional or design
• Workshop - writing a functional oriented requirements specification
• Workshop - writing a design oriented specification
• Remainder of requirements specification structure
• Annexes, appendices and applicable documents

5. Summary and Conclusion

About the Presenter - Mr. Robert Halligan, FIE Aust.

Your presenter, Mr Robert Halligan, FIE (Aust), is Managing Director of Project Performance (Australia) Pty Limited. He was also founder of Technology Australia Pty Limited, a consultancy company which received remarkable success in guiding its clients to success in winning and performing on major defence and aerospace projects. Mr Halligan has previously held senior project-related engineering and management positions with Rockwell, Andrew Corporation and the Department of Defence (Australia). Mr Halligan has honed his experience over twenty years in the engineering of large communications, computing and electronic warfare systems...

View Full Robert Halligan Biography

Requirements Engineering Course Schedule