Eliciting Requirements - what are basic requirements for Quality Function Deployment ? PART 2

Quality function deployment defines requirements in a way that maximizes the customer satisfaction. Quality function deployment is used to translate customer requirements to engineering specifications. It is a link between customers, design engineers, competitors and manufacturing. QFD is important as it gives importance to the customer and put these values in engineering process. There is a proper time to use quality function deployment. It is used in early phases of design. It can also be used as a planning tool as important areas are identified.

Quality function deployment contains four phases:
- product planning
- product design
- process planning
- production planning

The benefits of QFD includes better understanding of customer needs, reduces iterations in design and enhancing teamwork. There are three types of requirements that are defined by QFD:
- Normal requirements are a mirror of objectives that are stated for a product during meetings with the customer. Normal requirements include graphical displays,specific system levels.
- Expected requirements are requirements that are fundamental and customer does not explicitly state them but their absence will create a significant dissatisfaction. These include ease of software installation and human/machine interaction etc.
- Exciting requirements are the requirements that do not fall within customer's expectations but are very satisfying when they are present.

Eliciting Requirements - what are basic guidelines for conducting collaborative requirements gathering meeting? PART 1

For collaborative requirements gathering, stakeholders and developers work together to identify the problem, propose a solution and negotiate approaches. The basic guidelines include:
- software engineers and customers attend meetings.
- rules for preparation and participation are established.
- agenda that covers important points and encourage free flow of ideas.
- meeting is controlled by a facilitator who can be a customer, developer or an outsider.
- worksheets, wall stickers, chat room etc. are used.
- goal is to identify the problem, propose a solution and negotiate approaches.

If a system or product will serve many users, one should be certain that requirements are elicited from representative cross-section of users. If only one user defines all requirements, acceptance risk is high. As requirements gathering meeting begins, the first point of discussion is need and justification of the new product. Once agreement is established, each participant presents his lists for discussion in one particular area. After this, combined list is prepared by group after which facilitator coordinates discussion.
Avoid the impulse to shoot down a customer's idea as "too costly" or impractical. The idea is to negotiate a list that is acceptable to all.

Once the lists are completed, team is divided into sub teams and each works to develop mini specifications. Additions, deletions and elaborations are made. After this, each attendee makes a list of validation criteria and finally one or more participant is assigned the task of writing a complete draft specification.

What are different tasks of requirement engineering - Elaboration,Negotiation,Specification,Validation,Management

Elaboration involves the information that is obtained from team during inception and elicitation is expanded and refined. It focuses on defining, redefining and refining of models. It tries to model the "WHAT" rather than the "HOW".
- Requirement is created using methods that capitalize on user scenarios.It describes how the end-users and actors interact with the system.
- The analysis model is derived from the requirements model where each scenario is analyzed to get the analysis classes.
- The requirements model and the analysis model are the main workproduct of this task.

Negotiation involves customers, stakeholders and software development team reconcile conflicts. The purpose of negotiation is to develop a project plan that meets the requirements of the user while reflecting real-world constraints such as time,people and budget. Negotiation includes:
- always remember negotiation is not completion.
- always have a strategy.
- always listen effectively.
- always focus on other party's interest.
- never make it personal.
- always be creative.
- be ready to commit.

Specification is the final artifact or work product produced by the software engineer during requirements engineering. It serves as the foundation for design and construction of software.

In Validation,the work products produced as a consequence of requirements engineering are assessed for quality. It checks whether inconsistencies, omissions, and errors have been detected and corrected. The
review team that validates the requirements look for errors in content or interpretation,areas where clarification is required, missing information, inconsistencies,conflicting and unrealistic requirements.

Management is a set of activities that help the project team identify, control, and track requirements and their changes at any time as the project progresses.

What are concepts of Requirements Engineering? Different tasks of requirement engineering - Inception and Elicitation.

Requirement Engineering encompasses a set of tasks that lead to an understanding of what the business impact of the software will be, what the customer wants, and how end-user will interact with the software. The basic agreement between end-users and developers on what the software should do is given by requirement engineering.

It gives stakeholders anopportunity to define their requirements understandable to the development team. Designing and building an elegant computer program that solves the wrong problem is a waste. This is the reason why it is important to understand what customer wants before one begins to design and build a computer-based system. Requirements Engineering builds a bridge to design and construction.

There are seven distinct tasks to requirements engineering namely inception, elicitation, elaboration, negotiation, specification, validation and management.

INCEPTION

At inception, the problem scope and its nature is defined.
To initiate requirement engineering, steps include:
- identify stakeholders.
- recognize multiple viewpoints.
- work towards collaboration.
- ask the first question.
The main output or work product of inception task is a one or two pages of
product request which is a paragraph summary of the problem and its nature.

Elicitation

Elicitation is a task that helps the customer define what is required. The problems encountered are problems of scope, problems of understanding, problems of volatility. Elicitation makes use of a requirements elicitation format that combines the elements of problem solving, elaboration, negotiation, and specification.
Joint Application Development is one collaborative requirement gathering technique that is popularly used to elicit requirements.
The tasks involved in elicitation can be categorized into three groups, namely, pre-joint meeting tasks, joint meeting tasks and post-joint meeting tasks.

Quality Function Deployment is a technique that emphasizes an understanding of what is valuable to the customer. It identifies three types of requirements normal requirements, expected requirements and exciting requirements.

The output of the elicitation task can vary depending on size of thesystem or product to be built. For most systems, the output or work products include a statement of need and feasibility, a bounded statement of scope for the system or product, a list of customer, users, and other stakeholders who participated in requirements elicitation, a description of the system's technical environment and a priority list of requirements, preferably, in terms of functions, objects and domain constraints that apply to each.

Requirements Engineering Tasks

Requirements Engineering :
* Provides a solid approach for addressing challenges in software project.
* Must be adapted to the needs of the: Process, project and product and the people doing the work.
* Begins during the communication activity and continues into the modeling activity.
* Helps software engineers to better understand the problem they will work to solve.

Requirements Engineering Tasks :
- Inception
* A task that defines the scope and nature of the problem to be solved.
* Software engineers ask context-free questions.
* Intent is to establish a basic understanding of the problem, the people who want a solution, nature of the solution that is desired and the effectiveness of preliminary communication and collaboration between the customer and the developer.

- Elicitation
Ask the customer, the users and others about the objectives of the system, what is to be accomplished, how the system of product fits into the needs of the business and finally, how the system or product is to be used on a day-to-day basis.
Why Elicitation is Difficult?
* Problems of scope.
* Problems of understanding.
* Problems of volatility.

- Elaboration
* Basic requirements (obtained from the customer during inception and elicitation) are refined and modified.
* Focuses on developing a refined technical model of software functions, features and constraints..
* Driven by the creation and refinement of user scenarios.
* End-result: analysis model that defines the informational, functional and behavioral domain of the problem.

- Negotiation
* There’s no winner and loser in an effective negotiation.
* Customers usually ask for more rather than what can be achieved.
* Some proposed conflicting requirements.
* The requirements engineer must reconcile these conflicts through a process of negotiation.

- Specification
* It can be written document, a set of graphical models, a formal mathematical model,a collection of usage scenarios,a prototype,or any combination of these.
* It is the final work product produced by the requirements engineer.
* It serves as the foundation for subsequent software engineering activities.
* It describes the function and performance of a computer-based system and the constraints that will govern its development.

- Validation
* Work products produced are assessed for quality in this step.
* A task which examines the specification to ensure that all software requirements have been stated unambiguously.
* That inconsistencies, omissions and errors have been detected and corrected.
* That work products conform to the standards established for the process, project and the product.

Overview of Requirements Engineering

Software requirements engineering is the process of determining what is to be produced in a software system. In developing a complex software system, the requirements engineering process has the widely recognized goal of determining the needs for, and the intended external behavior, of a system design. This process is regarded as one of the most important parts of building a software system.
Requirements engineering is an important aspect of any software project, and is a general term used to encompass all the activities related to requirements. The five specific steps in software requirements engineering are:

* Requirements inception
* Requirements elicitation
* Requirements analysis
* Requirements specification
* Requirements validation

Although they seem to be separate tasks, these four processes cannot be strictly separated and performed sequentially. All four are performed repeatedly because the needs are often impossible to realize until after a system is built. Even when requirements are stated initially, it is likely they will change at least once during development, and it is very likely they will change immediately after development.