REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING (PART ONE)

First thing that comes to our mind after seeing the word “requirements engineering” is, that why requirement gathering and analysis are of so much importance for a technical profession like engineering?

Well,the answer is quite obvious and that is demands of users. At the end the product,software etc. developed in engineering , are all for the ease of users. Thus seeing a product from user’s point of view and analyzing there requirements and expectations, from the product are of utmost importance.

Now first let’s see what REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING is ?

• Require engineering comprises the first and the basic activities that lay down the foundation for the success of any software project.
• It is the science and discipline concerned with analyzing and documenting requirements.
• It can also be described as the task of capturing ,structuring,and accurately representing the user’s requirements so that they can be correctly included in systems which meet those requirements.
• It also refers to the process of defining and maintaining requirements  .

The main question that arises now is,that what will happen if requirements of users are not structured and documented efficiently? It can lead to a major project failure. In the worst case the product developed as the end product is completely different from the model developed in the initialization phase of the project. Well, to be precised it can lead to following problems:-

• It typically leads to incorrect estimates, creation of an unsatisfactory system and frequent changes.
• Many errors in requirements definition are passed undetected to later phases of the life cycle and correcting these errors during or after implementation becomes extremely costly.

Basically, if we talk about requirements then they can be summarized as, expectations that users have from a software product. If requirements specified by users are not meant then the, product is of no use. There mainly two types of requirements they are-

1. Functional Requirements:-  These type of requirements typically focus on the “what” of the system and identify the “functions” and “data” related requirements.

2. Non-Functional Requirements:- These type of requirements typically focus on the “how well” aspects of the system and identify attributes like performance, maintainability,reliability,portability  and the constraints under which the system needs to operate.

In the next article we shall discuss about activities under requirements engineering.

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