Chalmers GU

DAT231/DIT276 Requirements Engineering

Course was offered by: Chalmers | University of Gothenburg
Course responsible: Dr. Richard Berntsson Svensson
Credits: 7.5 ECTS
Level: Master level (second cycle)
Course syllabus DAT231, DIT276

One of the main challenges in software development is to make sure you are developing the right system, i.e. to understand the requirements that need to be fulfilled. The focus of this course is how to find and collect requirements from relevant sources both at the start and during a software development project. But also how to manage changes as a software projects evolves. Different methods for this as well as different underlying principles and formats for documenting and maintaining requirements are covered.

This course is based on lectures, workshops, a project in groups of 4-5 students, and a written exam.

In particular the course covers the problems that arise when Requirements Engineering is conducted in a fast-paced, cost-sensitive industrial reality. The following topics are included in the course:

  • Stakeholder Identification and Management
  • Requirements Elicitation
  • Writing Requirements and Requirements Specifications
  • Quality Assurance of Requirements
  • Prioritising Requirements
  • Connections and Alignment between Requirements Engineering and other Software Engineering activities
  • Requirements Engineering in In-Project vs. Market-driven Development
  • Requirements Engineering in Agile and Iterative/Incremental Development

    • Lectures

    L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7, L8 L9/10

    Guest Lecture by Stefan Eekenulv, Inceptive
    Overview
    Date Week Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
    Sep. 1-5 1 (36) 10-12 L1, Beta 8-10 WS1, Beta 8-10 L2, Beta
    Sep. 8-12 2 (37) 8-10 L3, Omega 8-10 L4, Beta
    8-13 EX, Jupiter 317
    12-17 EX, Jupiter 322    		 8-13 EX, Jupiter 317
    Sep. 15-19 3 (38) 8-12 L5, Beta 8-13 WS2, Jupiter 317
    12-17 EX, Jupiter 322    		 10-13 EX, Jupiter 317/322
    13-15 WS2, Jupiter 317
    13-15 EX, Jupiter 322    		 8-12 EX, Jupiter 317/322
    Sep. 22-26 4 (39) 10-12 L6, Beta 8-10 WS3, Beta
    8-13 EX, Jupiter 317    		 10-15 EX Jupiter 317/322 8-12 EX, Jupiter 317/322
    Sep. 29 - Oct. 3 5 (40) 10-12 L7, Beta 8-13 EX, Jupiter 317 8-12 EX, Jupiter 317/321
    Oct. 6-10 6 (41) 10-12 L8, Beta 8-13 EX, Jupiter 317 10-15 EX, Jupiter 317/322 8-12 EX, Jupiter 317/322
    Oct. 13-17 7 (42) 10-12 L9, Beta 8-10 L10, Omega
    8-13 EX, Jupiter 317
    12-17 EX, Jupiter 322    		 10-15 EX, Jupiter 317/322 8-10 EX, Jupiter 317/322
    Oct. 20-24 8 (43) 12-17 EX, Jupiter 322 10-15 EX, Jupiter 317 10-12 WS4, Beta
    Oct. 27-31 9 (44) Oct. 28
    Exam, EM, L

    Content
    Week Lect. Lecture Area Literature WS Workshop Topic Project Deadlines
    W1 L1 Introduction Lau:1 Project Mission
    Thu 1:00pm
    WS1 The project
    L2 Elicitation Lau: 8 Mission choice at
    Friday's lecture
    W2 L3 Specification 1 Lau: 2-4
    L4 Creativity [CREA]
    W3 L5 Market-Driven RE, Bespoke RE,
    Prioritisation, Release Planning, Interdependencies    		 [MDRE], [PRIO],
    [RP], [INTDEP]    		 WS2 Creativity
    W4 L6 Specification 2, Quality Requirements Lau: 5-6, [QUPER], [QR] WS3 Requirements
    specification    		 Release R1 Mon 8:00am
    W5 L7 Validation, User Experience/Emotional Requirements Lau:9, [UX]
    W6 L8 Guest lecture - Eric Knauss: Large-Scale RE and Agile RE [AGRE] Release R2, Validation Checklist Mon 8:00am
    Validation Report Fri 8:00am
    W7 L9 Project Conference Conference Presentation Mon 4:00pm
    L10 Project Conference
    W8 WS4 Guest lecture - Stefan Ekenulv from INCEPTIVE: TBA
    Release R3 Mon 08:00am
    Course Evaluation FRi 11:59pm
    W9 Written Exam All literature

    Project

    Project Description

    Project Groups

    Project Mission 2014
    Customer group: Project Mission -> Contractor group <- Supervisor of contractor group
    A: Food Truck Finder -> L <- Pariya
    B: Economic consumption tracking and budget planning -> E <- Pariya
    C: Student portal -> F <- Emil
    D: Smart Office systems -> H <- Pariya
    E: Cheap Electronics AB webstore -> K <- Pariya
    F: Commodity Shelf Life System -> B <- Emil
    G: Car ShApp -> C <- Emil
    H: Control Software for a Quadcopter -> D <- Richard
    I: Event tracker -> A <- Pariya
    J: Location based social interaction app -> N <- Pariya
    K: MeetApp -> M <- Emil
    L: Gothenburg City Library -> G <- Pariya
    M: Sports in Gothenburg -> I <- Pariya
    N: Online Sports Team Finder -> O <- Richard
    O: Next Generation Mobile Assistant Application -> J <- Emil


    Project Mission 2013
    Customer group: Project Mission -> Contractor group <- Supervisor of contractor group
    A: After-Works Gothenburg -> I <- Emil
    B: Online grocery store -> L <- Richard
    C: Smart Home -> J <- Richard
    D: Class Live Streaming System -> B <- Emil
    E: Healthy food planner -> K <- Richard
    F: Student Budget Application< -> G <- Richard
    G: Gothenburg Cultural Guide -> A <- Richard
    H: Educational video game for indirect learning -> C <- Emil
    I: Creative mind-map collaboration tool -> H <- Richard
    J: Event It -> F <- Richard
    K: Online Food Ordering -> D <- Richard
    L: Online Streaming of Lectures -> E <- Emil


    Formatting for Experience Report (ER)
    Your Experience Report (ER) for the the project should be formatted using the IEEE Conference Proceedings format.

    Author Guidelines (IEEE Conference Proceedings format)
    Latest IEEE MS Word format file
    Latex format files
    Another package of Latex format files if you have troubles with the one above

    Requirements Engineering Tool (reqT)
    Optional: You are allowed to use reqT for your Requirements Document in your projects. However, there will be no support/help from the examiner or project supervisors from this course.

    reqT

    Literature

    p>
    Course book
    [Lau] Soren Lauesen, Software Requirements - Styles and Techniques, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-74570-4, 2002.

    Research papers
    [CREA] "Can Requirements Be Creative? Experiences with an Enhanced Air Space Management System", Neil Maiden, Cornelius Ncube, Suzanne Robertson, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07), 2007

    [MDRE] "Market-Driven Requirements Engineering for Software Products", Björn Regnell and Sjaak Brinkkemper, Engineering and Managing Software Requirements, Eds. A. Aurum and C. Wohlin, Springer, ISBN 3-540-25043-3, 2005.

    [INTDEP] "An industrial survey of requirements interdependencies in software product release planning", Carlshamre, P., Sandahl, K., Lindvall, M., Regnell, B., Nattoch Dag, J.: IEEE Int. Conf. on Requirements Engineering (RE01), Toronto, Canada, pp. 84–91 (2001)

    [AGRE] "Agile Requirements Engineering Practices: An Empirical Study", Lan Cao, Balasubramaniam Ramesh, IEEE Software , January/February 2008, pp.60-67, 2008.

    [QUPER] "Setting quality targets for coming releases with QUPER: An industrial case study", Richard Berntsson Svensson, Yuri Sprockel, Björn Regnell, Sjaak Brinkkemper, Requirements Engineering journal, vol.17(4), pp. 283-298, 2012.

    [PRIO] "Requirements Prioritization", Berander, P., Andrews, A.A., Engineering and Managing Software Requirements, Eds. A. Aurum and C. Wohlin, Springer, ISBN 3-540-25043-3, 2005.

    [RP] "The Art and Science of Software Release Planning", Günther Ruhe and Moshood Omolade Saliu, IEEE Software, November/December, pp. 47-53, 2005

    [QR] "Quality Requirements in Industrial Practice - an extended interview study at eleven companies", Berntsson Svensson, R., Gorschek, T., Regnell, B., Torkar, R., Shahrokni, A., Feldt, R., IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, vol.38(4), pp. 923-935, 2012.

    [UX] "An Introduction To Experience Requirements", Callele, D., Neufeld, E., Schneider, K.: IEEE Int. Conf. on Requirements Engineering (RE10), Sydney, Australia, pp. 395–396 (2010)