Presentation discussed during the IREB roundtable How to Write good Requirements with Sylwia Kopczyńska and Karolina Zmitrowicz, moderation Stan Buhne. During the roundtable we had a lively discussion with Requirements Engineering experts Karolina and Sylwia, who gave many insightful points on how to write good requirements. Some points that were discussed included the importance of writing good requirements, their quality criteria and which are most common, examples for good and bad requirements, and standards for requirements specification. Recording available on YouTube https://youtu.be/m_JFdblX4KU

1. Kapitelname
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Slides provided by: Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz
How to write good requirements – in a Nutshell
IREB Roundtable: How to Write Good Requirements?

2. Why it is important to have good requirements?
See also at the results of different
surveys investigating the consequences
of problems with requirements, e.g.,
NaPiRE (http://re-survey.org/)
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by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz
Copyright © www.projectcartoon.com under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

3. What are requirements’ quality characteristics (criteria)?
For example:
 IEEE 830
Unambiguous, Complete, Concise, Prioritized, Verifiable, Modifiable, Traceable
 IEEE29148
For a single requirement: Unambiguous, Complete, Necessary, Verifiable, Traceable, Singular,
Implementation free, Consistent
For a set of requirements: Complete, Consistent, Affordable, Bounded
 INVEST
Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small
 IREB
 For single requirements
 Adequate, Necessary, Unambiguous, Complete (self-contained), Understandable, Verifiable
 For a set of requirements
 Consistent, Non-redundant, Complete, Modifiable, Traceable, Conformant
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by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz

4. What are the examples of requirements that are not so good?
 The system shall respond immediately
 The system shall be fast
 GUI shall be nice
 Allowing cash withdrawal
 The system shall be available on all browsers
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by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz

5. 5
How to check / improve my requirements? (1)
 E.g. Reviews
 e.g., based on the quality characteristics
 Adherence to notation (form, format) and using templates, e.g.,
 EARS, Rupp’s, NoRTs
 Formal spec (e.g., LTL) vs. Natural language spec (e.g., User Story, Use Case)
 Planguage
 Guidelines, e.g.:
 Writing Effective Use Cases by A. Cockburn
 Standards
 IEEE830, IEEE29148
 ISO25010, ISO27000
 Prototypes
 e.g. paperbased- or software prototypes
 Definition of Ready
 especially in an agile environment
 Remember about Acceptance Criteria and Acceptance Tests
 e.g., BDD approach
by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz

6. How to check / improve my requirements? (2)
 Select a work product type that fits the intended purpose
 Avoid redundancy by referencing content instead of repeating the same content
again
 Avoid inconsistencies between work products, particularly when they cover
different aspects
 Use terms consistently, as defined in the glossary
 Structure work products appropriately — for example, by using standard
structures
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Check also: CPRE Foundation Level  https://www.ireb.org/en/cpre/foundation/
by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz

7. How to check / improve my requirements? (3)
Remember about trade-offs quality-cost
Look for studies/reports about experience, lessons learned, benchmarks,
experiments of using different techniques, for example:
When considering using
Non-functional Requirements Templates (NoRTs):
 you might look at the case studies
and lab experiments to learn that:
 so that you can see if it fits your context
and make an informed decision
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• NFRs elicited with the use of templates are:
 Less ambiguous
 More detailed
 Better from the point of view of testability
 More complete
 Templates do not speed up the elicitation process
Kopczyńska,
S.,
Nawrocki,
J.,
Ochodek,
M.
On
usability
and
maintainace
issues
of
catalog
of
non-functional
requirements
templates
–
empirical
study,
Information
and
Software
Technology,
103,
75-91,
2018
by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz

8. Thank you!
Reach out for us at LinkedIn
 Sylwia Kopczyńska
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylwiakopczynska/
 Karolina Zmitrowicz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolinazmitrowicz/
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by Sylwia Kopczyńska & Karolina Zmitrowicz