Software Engineering basics - Requirement Engineering Process i

The Requirement Engineering Process in Software Engineering is the systematic approach to gathering, analyzing, documenting, and managing software requirements.

1. Requirement Elicitation

• Goal: Collect requirements from stakeholders (customers, users, domain experts, etc.).

• Activities:

  • Interviews, questionnaires, workshops

  • Brainstorming, use cases, observation

  • Studying existing documents or systems

• Output: Initial list of requirements.

2. Requirement Analysis

• Goal: Examine requirements for feasibility, conflicts, completeness, and consistency.

• Activities:

  • Prioritizing requirements

  • Identifying ambiguities or contradictions

  • Performing feasibility studies (technical, economic, operational)

• Output: Refined and agreed set of requirements.

3. Requirement Specification

• Goal: Document requirements in a clear, precise, and structured form.

• Activities:

  • Writing the Software Requirement Specification (SRS) document

  • Defining functional and non-functional requirements

  • Using modeling tools (DFDs, UML diagrams, use case diagrams)

• Output: SRS document (formal contract between stakeholders and developers).

4. Requirement Validation

• Goal: Ensure the documented requirements truly reflect user needs and are of high quality.

• Activities:

  • Reviews, inspections, walkthroughs

  • Prototyping and stakeholder feedback

  • Checking against qualities: complete, correct, consistent, verifiable

• Output: Validated and approved requirements baseline.

Summary Flow

Elicitation → Analysis → Specification → Validation

 These phases help avoid misunderstandings and ensure the software is built according to the user’s real needs.