0 What is Requirements Engineering

Requirements Engineering

“Requirements Engineering involves all life-cycle activities devoted to identification of user requirements, analysis of the requirements to derive additional requirements, documentation of the requirements as a specification, and validation of the documented requirements against user needs, as well as processes that support these activities.”
        -DoD(Department of Defense). Software Technology Strategy.

Why Requirements Engineering?

    40 - 60 percent of known defects found in a project are errors made during requirements stage. Many software development organizations struggle to gather, document, and manage their product requirements. Most of the surveys done indicates that, incomplete and changing requirements with lack of user input and their involvement, are the major reasons why IT projects fail to deliver on schedule, within budget.

    In a software industry, no one can bear the consequences of ineffective requirements engineering. The cost of inaccurate, misunderstood, and not signed off requirements affects everyone in the industry in terms of time, money and opportunities lost. The result will be of total chaos in terms of frustration, confusion, mistrust, higher cost, lack of quality, overtime, over budget, a general lack of understanding and incapability to handle issues. The interests of all the known stakeholders in a software system, coincide more in requirement engineering phase than in other phases. This leads to exciting products, happy developers and delighted customer, if requirements are handled well, else it can become the source of frustration, friction and misunderstanding that can undermine product's business value and quality. As requirements is the base for both software development and project management activities, all stakeholders should follow an effective requirements engineering process.