Software Engineering

7.2 
Step 2: Requirement analysis and specification
The translation of stakeholder needs into a feasible, effective, and efficient soft-
ware solution involves exploration of the problem space expressed by customers 
and evaluation and analysis of potential designs approaches. Only when the design 

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CHAPTER 7 
Understanding Software Requirements
solution is sufficiently mature and technical risks eliminated or minimized should 
the requirements be specified. This requires the application of software engineer-
ing practices to derive a design solution that balances the various stakeholder needs 
against cost and schedule constraints. The general approach to deriving a software 
solution involves the following three areas of interest: