Software Engineering

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7.8 
Exploring stakeholder needs
7.8 
Exploring stakeholder needs
Establishing detailed technical plans can only be achieved when stakeholder needs 
and expectations have been properly translated into an achievable set of software 
requirements. Eliciting, harmonizing, and prioritizing stakeholder requirements are 
important steps in aligning work plans with project objectives. However, before the 
software requirements can be specified, some amount of design conceptualization 
and exploration must be performed to ensure that the product can be developed and 
delivered within the project resource constraints. The software requirements base-
line represents a binding agreement (sometimes contractual) between the techni-
cal, project management, and stakeholder representatives concerning the product 
characteristics and operational effectiveness. To ensure that the project team can 
successfully deliver the software product and achieve project cost and schedule 
objectives, some amount of effort must be expended to amplify the architectural 
concept. Early and continual examination of the software architecture, especially 
the areas that are technically challenging or risky, provides the assurances neces-
sary to have confidence that the technical and project plans can be satisfied.
Establishing the software product architecture involves performing several itera-
tions of the software engineering practices. In concept, each of the first three stages 
of software development involve performing most of these practices at least once to 
produce the requirements specifications and functional and physical architectures. 
Figure 7.2
 shows how the software engineering practices are applied to generate 
the desired results for each stage of development. However, within each stage these