Requirements Documentation: Why a Formal Basis is Essential

Unless you have a complete and precise description of your product’s requirements, it is very unlikely that you will satisfy those requirements. A requirements document that is incomplete or inconsistent can do a great deal of damage by misleading the developers. A collection of statements in English or some other natural language cannot be checked for completeness and will not be precise. Even if you translate a requirements statement into a mathematical language, you can only show that the result of the translation is complete and unambiguous; the original may still be faulty. This talk will describe a simple and sound procedure for documenting requirements - one that lets you know when your document is complete and consistent (but not necessarily correct). Documents produced by following this procedure can be reviewed by potential users and specialists and can serve as the input to tools that generate prototypes and monitors. McMaster University 15/6/00 FACULTY OF ENGINEERING Sof...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ICRE
• Authors: David Lorge Parnas
• Keywords: FACULTY OF ENGINEERING, ICRE 2000, Requirements, Requirements Documents, Software Engineering