================================ EMAIL FORWARDING SERVICE OF RESG ================================ THE REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING SPECIALIST GROUP OF THE BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY For furher information, visit our web page: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/bcs/resg/ =============== S E M I N A R Centre for HCI Design School of Informatics City University Wednesday 3rd November, 14.00hrs, Room A529, College Building Requirements: Making them Visible Suzanne Robertson The Atlantic Systems Guild Ltd 11 St Marys Terrace London W2 1SU email:suzanne@systemsguild.com There is ample evidence that finding requirements early saves time money and anguish later on in a project. To be able to find the requirements you need to make them visible to all the different stakeholders by quantifying them in a consistent and understandable way. The requirements template leads to a common language for expressing requirements. The template provides a guide for identifying functional requirements, non-functional requirements, goals and constraints and linking all these components in a requirements network. A requirements shell identifies a number of quantifiable components about individual requirements: unique identification, requirement type, description, purpose, customer value, conflicts and fit criteria. You can use each of these components as input to testing the requirement to determine whether it is or is not a well stated requirement. For example, the fit criterion is an unambiguous specification of how you will know whether any given solution fits, or does not fit, the requirement. The Quality Gateway is a process for testing requirements. To pass through the gateway and be included in the requirements specification, a requirement is tested for relevance, coherency, traceability, completeness, consistency, viability, and a number of other qualities that successful requirements must have. These tests are concerned with ensuring that the requirements are as complete and accurate as possible, and that they do not cause unnecessary problems later in the project. Keywords: Requirements, Quality Gateway, Fit Criteria. Suzanne is co-author of Mastering the Requirements Process (Addison-Wesley 1999) a book that provides guidance on finding requirements and writing them so that all the stakeholders can understand them. Suzanne is a principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild, a systems think tank. She has more than 30 years experience in systems specification and building. Her courses on requirements, systems analysis, design and problem solving are well known for their innovative workshops and business games. Suzanne has varied experience as a manager, programmer, analyst, and designer. Since 1978, she has consulted, done research and taught in Europe, Australia, the Far East and the United States. She specialises in helping organisations to adapt modern systems development techniques to fit specific projects. Current work includes research and consulting on patterns and the specification and reuse of requirements and techniques for assessing requirements specifications. The product of this research is Volere, a complete requirements process and template for assessing requirements quality, and for specifying business requirements. Apart from her books, Suzanne is author of many papers on systems engineering. She is a member of IEEE and the Australian Computer and the British Computer Societys Requirements and Reuse Groups. For directions, see: http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/homes/msch/seminar/ For general queries, contact Neil Maiden at address below. ______________________________________________________________________________ Dr Neil Maiden Tel: +44-171-477-8412 Senior Lecturer Fax: +44-171-477-8859 Centre for HCI Design E-Mail: N.A.M.Maiden@city.ac.uk City University http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~cc559/info.html Northampton Square London EC1V OHB