Software Engineering

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CHAPTER 8 
Software Requirements Analysis Practice
Software requirement analysis is the software engineering practice that, at the top 
level of the software architecture, translates stakeholder needs and expectations into a 
viable set of software requirements. As the software product architecture is systemat-
ically revealed, these tasks should be selectively applied to specify the requirements 
for each element of the architecture. This set of tasks applies to the software prod-
uct (application and computing environment), as well as post-development software 
sustainment processes. Software requirements analysis involves a set of analyses and 
assessments to examine stakeholder needs and software requirements to comprehend 
the implications of each requirement on the scope of the development effort.
The complexity associated with the design solution must be understood before 
the requirements are baselined and placed under configuration control. In addition, 
requirements analysis must assess the feasibility of satisfying the complete set of 
software requirements within program cost and schedule constraints. This can only 
be achieved by exploring the solution space for each requirement and correlating the 
sensitivity of project variables to various levels of performance. This may necessitate 
conducting exploratory architectural investigations (functional analysis and applica-
tion design synthesis) and trade-off analyses to achieve a balanced set of requirements 
that can be successfully implemented within program cost and schedule objectives.
This chapter discusses the primary tasks that are involved with software require-
ments analysis given the environment the application is constrained to operate within. 
This involves exploration of the operational and sustainment processes to determine 
the functional and performance characteristics needed to satisfy the stakeholder of 
the software product. The execution of these software requirements analysis tasks 
results in the generation of specifications for the software product (computing envi-
ronment, software application, the application interfaces) and the software sustain-
ment processes. These specifications must be informally controlled until the product 
design is determined to be sufficiently defined and agreed upon by stakeholders to be 
placed under configuration control. The baseline software requirements and interface 
specifications form the basis for the software test and evaluation effort. 
Figure 8.1
 
depicts the tasks that contribute to software requirements analysis.
These tasks have been classified to emphasize the area of investigation each task 
addresses. These categories include project, operational, product, and post-development 
process analyses, and project assessment. The analytical tasks are intended to examine 
the software product to understand it in the context of its project, operational, and sus-
tainment environments. Project assessment tasks are performed on preliminary require-
ments to understand the feasibility of achieving project objectives if the requirements 
are to be endorsed, baselined, and placed under project configuration control.