Chapter 4 Requirements Elicitation, Specification, and Management

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Chapter 4 Requirements Elicitation,
Specification, and Management
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Software Lifecycle Activities
Aka Architecture
Aka Detailed Design
Solution Space
Problem Space
Aka Construction
System Design
Object Design
Implemen- tation
Testing
Requirements Elicitation Specification
Requirements Analysis
Implemented By
Expressed in Terms Of
Structured By
Realized By
Verified By
?
?
SubSystems, Interfaces, Constraints
Application Domain Objects
Implementation Domain Objects
Use Case Model
Source Code
Test Cases
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Requirements Elicitation and Specification
Activities

• Identify, describe actors
• Identify, describe scenarios
• Identify, describe use cases
• functional, non-functional requirements
• Identify relationships among use cases
• Validate, refine use cases

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Requirements Elicitation, Specification, and
Analysis

• Requirements Elicitation and Specification
  Definition of the system in terms understood by
  the customer
• Determine and capture the purpose of a system
• Definition of the system boundary (scope)
• What is inside, what is outside?
• Specification of the systems capabilities
• functional and non-functional
• may be captured in a variety of notations or
  approaches
• e.g., semi-formal use cases, formal Z, VDM,
  Statechart specifications
• Analysis Technical specification of the system
  in terms understood by the developer.

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Requirements Elicitation

• Challenging activity
• Requires collaboration of people with different
  backgrounds
• User with application domain knowledge
• Developer with implementation domain knowledge
• Bridging the gap between user and developer
• Scenarios Example of the use of the system in
  terms of a series of interactions with between
  the user and the system
• Use cases Abstraction that describes a class of
  scenarios

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Types of Requirements

• Functional requirements Describe the
  interactions between the system and its
  environment independent from implementation
• The watch system must display the time based on
  its location
• Nonfunctional requirements User visible aspects
  of the system not directly related to functional
  behavior.
• The response time must be less than 1 second
• The accuracy must be within a second
• The watch must be available 24 hours a day except
  from 200am-201am and 300am-301am
• Constraints (Pseudo requirements) Imposed by
  the client or the environment in which the system
  will operate
• The implementation language must be COBOL.

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What is usually not in the Requirements?

• System structure, implementation technology
• Development methodology
• Development environment
• Implementation language
• Reusability

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Requirements Validation and Quality Attributes

• Validation - critical step in the development
  process
• Question Are we building the right product?
• Some Requirements Quality criteria
• Correctness
• The requirements represent the clients view.
• Completeness
• All possible scenarios through the system are
  described, including exceptional behavior by the
  user or the system
• Consistency
• There are functional or nonfunctional
  requirements that contradict each other
• Clarity
• There are no ambiguities in the requirements.

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Requirements Validation Criteria (continued)

• Realism
• Requirements can be implemented and delivered
• Traceability
• Each system function can be traced to a
  corresponding set of functional requirements
• Refer to the IEEE recommended practice for
  software requirements specifications for
  additional quality criteria
• IEEE Std 830-1998 , 20 Oct. 1998

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Types of Requirements Elicitation

• Greenfield Engineering
• Development starts from scratch, no prior system
  exists, the requirements are extracted from the
  end users, the client, applicable standards
• Triggered by user needs
• Re-engineering
• Re-design and/or re-implementation of an existing
  system using newer technology
• Triggered by technology enabler
• Interface Engineering
• Provide the services of an existing system in a
  new environment
• Triggered by technology enabler or new market
  needs

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Scenarios

• A narrative description of what people do and
  experience as they try to make use of computer
  systems and applications M. Carrol,
  Scenario-based Design, Wiley, 1995
• A concrete, focused, informal description of a
  single feature of the system used by a single
  actor.
• Scenarios can have many different uses during the
  software lifecycle

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Heuristics for finding Scenarios

• Ask yourself and/or the client the following
  questions
• What are the primary tasks that the system needs
  to perform?
• What data will the actor create, store, change,
  remove or add in the system?
• What external changes does the system need to
  know about?
• What changes or events will the actor of the
  system need to be informed about?
• What standards need to be complied with?

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Why Scenarios and Use Cases?

• Comprehensible by the user
• Use cases model a system from the users point of
  view (functional requirements)
• Define every possible event flow through the
  system
• Description of externally visible interactions
  between objects
• Use cases can form basis for whole development
  process (e.g., RUP)
• User manual
• Analysis model
• System design and detailed design models
• Implementation
• System Test specification
• Client acceptance test

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Scenario Example Warehouse on Fire

• Bob, driving down main street in his patrol car
  notices smoke coming out of a warehouse. His
  partner, Alice, reports the emergency from her
  car.
• Alice enters the address of the building (428
  Main st.) , a brief description of its location
  (i.e., north west corner), and an emergency
  level, 2. In addition to a fire unit, she
  requests 2 paramedic units on the scene given
  that area appear to be relatively busy. She
  confirms her input and waits for an
  acknowledgment.
• John, the Dispatcher, is alerted to the emergency
  by a beep of his workstation. He reviews the
  information submitted by Alice and acknowledges
  the report. He allocates a fire unit and two
  paramedic units to the Incident site and sends
  their estimated arrival time (ETA), 10 minutes,
  to Alice.
• Alice received the acknowledgment and the ETA.

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Observations about Warehouse on Fire Scenario

• Concrete scenario
• Describes a single instance of reporting a fire
  incident.
• Does not describe all possible situations in
  which a fire can be reported.
• Has specific values
• Participating actors
• Bob, Alice and John

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After the scenarios are formulated

• Find a use case in the scenario that specifies
  all possible instances of how to report a fire
• Example Report Emergency in the first
  paragraph of the scenario is a candidate for a
  use case
• Describe this use case in more detail
• Describe the entry condition
• Describe the normal flow of events
• Describe the exit condition
• Describe alternate flow of events
• Describe special requirements (constraints,
  nonfunctional requirements)

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Example of steps in formulating a use case

• 1. name the use case
• Use case name ReportEmergency
• should be a concise, verb phrase
• Avoid vague verbs like process
• 2. find the actors
• Generalize the concrete names (Bob) to
  participating actors (Field officer)
• Participating Actors
• Field Officer (Bob and Alice in the Scenario)
• Dispatcher (John in the Scenario)
• 3. concentrate on the flow of events
• Use natural language
• Be specific, unambiguous, clear, correct, concise
  

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Example of steps in formulating a use case

• Formulate the Flow of Events (preliminary
  version)
• The FieldOfficer activates the Report Emergency
  function on her terminal. FRIEND responds by
  presenting a form to the officer.
• The FieldOfficer fills the form, by selecting the
  emergency level, type of emergency, location, and
  brief description of the situation. The
  FieldOfficer also describes possible responses to
  the emergency situation. Once the form is
  completed, the FieldOfficer submits the form. The
  Dispatcher is notified.
• The Dispatcher reviews the submitted information
  and creates an Incident in the database by
  invoking the OpenIncident use case. The
  Dispatcher selects a response and acknowledges
  the emergency report.
• The FieldOfficer receives the acknowledgment and
  the selected response.

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Example of steps in formulating a use case

• Write down the exceptions
• The FieldOfficer is notified immediately if the
  connection between her terminal and the central
  is lost.
• These are captured as alternate flows in the use
  case
• Identify and write down any special requirements
• The FieldOfficers report is acknowledged within
  30 seconds

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How to Specify a Use Case (Summary)

• Name of Use Case
• Actors
• Description of actors involved in use case
• Entry condition
• Use a syntactic phrase such as This use case
  starts when
• Normal Flow of Events
• natural language
• Exit condition
• Star with This use cases terminates when
• Alternate Flow of Events (Exceptions)
• Describe what happens if things go wrong
• Special Requirements
• List nonfunctional requirements and constraints

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Use Case Model for Incident Management - UML
Dispatcher
FieldOf
f
icer
OpenIncident
ReportEmergency
AllocateResources
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Use Case Associations

• Use case association relationship between use
  cases
• Important types
• Extends
• Include
• Generalization

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ltltIncludegtgt Reuse of Existing Functionality

• Problem
• There are already existing functions. How can we
  reuse them?
• Solution
• The include association from a use case A to a
  use case B indicates that an instance of the use
  case A performs all the behavior described in the
  use case B (A delegates to B)
• Example
• The use case ViewMap describes behavior that
  can be used by the use case OpenIncident
  (ViewMap is factored out)
• Note The base case cannot exist alone. It is
  always called with the supplier use case

ltltincludegtgt
OpenIncident
ViewMap
Base Use Case
ltltincludegtgt
Supplier Use Case
AllocateResources
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ltExtendgtgt Association for Use Cases

• Problem
• The functionality in the original problem
  statement needs to be extended to describe
  additional, optional functionality.
• Solution
• An extend association from a use case A to a use
  case B indicates that use case B is an extension
  of use case A.
• Example
• The use case ReportEmergency is complete by
  itself , but can be extended by the use case
  Help for a specific scenario in which the user
  requires help
• i.e., Help is a capability that is not
  currently offered in the system
• Note In an extend assocation, the base use case
  can be executed without the use case extension

Help
ltltextendgtgt
FieldOfficer
ReportEmergency
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Generalization association in use cases

• Problem
• You have generalization relationships among use
  cases and want to model this
• Solution
• The child use cases inherit the behavior and
  meaning of the parent use case and add or
  override some behavior.
• Example
• Consider the use case ValidateUser, responsible
  for verifying the identity of the user. The
  customer might require two realizations
  CheckPassword and CheckFingerprint

CheckPassword
Parent Case
Child Use Case
ValidateUser
CheckFingerprint
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How do I find use cases?

• Find out what the user needs to do
• Task observation
• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Describe scenarios
• Use mock-ups as visual support, story-boards
• Generalize the scenarios into use cases

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How do I manage use cases?

• Options
• Use case model can go under configuration
  management as one unit
• Collections (i.e., subsets) of use cases can go
  under configuration management as one unit
• Individual use cases can go under configuration
  management as a unit
• Trade-offs
• How likely are some capabilities going to change?
• What metrics need to be collected?
• How many use cases are there? (e.g., 10? 100?
  1000?)
• Is there a straightforward way to partition them
  into subsets?
• What does the tool allow you to do? (e.g., one
  Rose .mdl file?)

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Use Cases Friend or Foe?

• Informal notation
• Once well written, they are straightforward to
  read
• - Difficult to write concise, unambiguous use
  cases
• English can be ambiguous
• - Very little automated tool support to check
  for defects (spell check,
• grammar check)
• Manual inspections are time consuming, error
  prone
• (Formal methods have fully or partially automated
  tool support to help identify problems)
• External Partitioning of Requirements
• List of use case names provides nice summary of
  the functional capabilities of the
• system
• Nice fit with scenario driven approaches good
  for requirements
• elicitation
• Blackbox description of the system
• - Does not support non-functional requirements
  well
• Non-functional requirements can permeate many
  functional capabilities