Requirements for cross-cutting qualities
Assuring cross-cutting quality is a challenge that has become increasingly important as systems grow more complex. This also impacts how Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches …
Showing 52 articles
How Epics Systematically Prevent the Implementation of Core Requirements
Discover the pitfalls of requirement prioritization in scaled agile frameworks. This article shows how epics and their use in scaled frameworks can systematically delay the …
Ethics of Using LLMs in Requirements Engineering
In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained significant traction across various domains due to their ability to process and generate human-like text. Their …
Beyond Participation
In Requirements Engineering, early stakeholder involvement is often seen as the best practice. But what if that’s putting the cart before the horse? This article proposes a …
How to go about it – a GDPR action plan | Part 2
Compliance with the European 'General Data Protection Regulation' (GDPR) requires a careful and structured approach by a team with many skills. It touches on a multitude of …
Why and when must requirement engineers pay attention to the GDPR? | Part 1
Data, and in particular personal data, is the new gold, and with it comes the need for appropriate protection. The European ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ [1] is the 'gold …
Integrating User-Centric Design in Business Analysis
Discover how user-centric design (UCD) can transform business analysis to create more intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly solutions. This article delves into the practical …
AI Assistants in Requirements Engineering | Part 2
Welcome to the second part of our exploration of AI assistants in Requirements Engineering. In Part 1, we discussed the art of effective prompting, introduced the concept of AI …
AI Assistants in Requirements Engineering | Part 1
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly critical role in various industries, and Requirements Engineering (RE) is no exception. Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI …
Requirements Elicitation in Modern Product Discovery
If you are working on products, you have realized product management handles requirements in a different way. When a business analyst or a product owner is eliciting requirements, …
Splitting Requirements at Scale
Analysis means breaking down large problems into smaller, more manageable ones. We, as BAs, understand intuitively that this is what we do and that how well we do this will likely …
Conversation with an Artificial Intelligence
This last decade has seen several breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular machine learning, with groundbreaking applications in all domains. It seems like it …
Why Your Agile Organization Needs a High-Performing Requirements Engineering Competency
In this article, I’m going to answer a question that I’ve been asked from people with stakes in requirements engineering (RE) and its sister competency, business analysis - …
Mission Possible
Concept for the successful handling of integral NFRs in Scaled Agile Environments.
Inputs to requirements engineering in agile projects
Practices from the Agile software development (ASD) spectrum are adopted by enterprises worldwide for project and product development. Either adopting practices from management …
The Potential of User Tests for Requirements Engineering
The article covers a topic of software tests as a requirement source, as techniques to investigate requirements and confirm compliance of the final product with requirements. In …
What is the Relevance of Requirements Engineering Research to Practitioners?
Introduction Requirements Engineering (RE) has been the subject of promising research for the last four decades, supported by a strong and vibrant research community that …
Mastering Business Requirements
From the community for the community „Question existing work methods and solutions and rethink them at the beginning of projects — it will never be so cost-effective to do so …
Learning from history: The case of Software Requirements Engineering
This article describes initial conclusions of our research into how and why the requirements engineer’s role has changed over the years, with the longer-term goal of developing …
When the rubber hits the road
Introduction There are a number of quality criteria for requirements. IREB Syllabus [1] groups them into three aspects: content, documentation and agreement. The quality aspect …
On the right track
For quite some time, IREB has promoted a partner program for companies worldwide who value sound requirements engineering and align the qualifications of their employees to IREB’s …
Discover Quality Requirements with the Mini-QAW
Good quality requirements help software engineers make the right architectural design decisions. Unfortunately, collecting requirements is not always easy. The Quality Attribute …
Biased Toddlers
“Biased? No, as a requirements engineer I strive to be impartial and unbiased”, right? But really being impartial and unbiased is extremely difficult! That is, if it is at all …
Making “agiLE” Work
As more large enterprises are adopting agile practices organization-wide, they face unique challenges when compared to smaller organizations or individual projects. While most …
The Business Case for Agile Business Analysis
Over the years, I have often been asked to ‘make the business case for agile Business Analysis’. Sometimes it comes up in a meeting with executives, as it did a number of years …
Modeling Requirements with Constraints
Modeling requirements is not really new, but there are many ways to do it. We discovered constraints as a powerful concept that allowed us to create concise models that are lean, …
Managing the Invisible
Software quality consists of many different aspects. Some of these aspects, like functional correctness or learnability, can be directly perceived and thus easily checked by the …
Modeling Requirements and Context as a means for Automated Requirements Validation
When designing an automation plant the control software for the entire plant is typically designed after the physical architecture of the automation plant and the technical plant …
Evolving and Improving the Requirements Approach to Big Data Projects
The Big Data technology and services market is expected to grow at a 26.4% compound annual growth to $41.5 billion in 2018 (source: IDC). Getting involved in a Big Data Project …
An “agile” lifecycle for requirements
In a previous article [1], we claimed that at least in certain circumstances, for certain types of systems, the requirements management discipline is still necessary in an agile …
Cyber Security Requirements Engineering
Sophisticated functionality and ever-increasing perfection of embedded and distributed IT systems have been made possible through an increasing amount of interconnected …
IT Requirements when Buying, not Making
Procuring off-the-shelf or COTS software is often the only feasible route to access new facilities, due to the reduced time, cost, risk and organisational impact [1] [2]. For some …
Applying IREB RE practices in an agile environment
Which of the many techniques learned by a certified requirements engineer according to the CPRE-FL syllabus are still helpful in agile projects? Which have to be learned …
Is requirements engineering still needed in agile development approaches?
When organizations come across agile approaches, they discover the following lines in the agile manifesto [1]: We have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes …
Requirements under construction
Eliciting requirements is a key skill in requirements engineering. A requirements engineer is supposed elicit requirements in a way that is both unbiased and neutral [1]. So far, …
Agility and Obligation
Many clients believe in fixed price agreements with well-defined requirements specifications in order to control the outcome and costs of software development. But because of the …
Building in security instead of testing it in
There are a numerous techniques for eliciting and documenting functional requirements. We all know interviews, workshops, questionnaires and studying documentation. And haven’t we …
Agile Product Ownership
The key to product success is to discover and deliver the right product for the right customers—and to do it at the right time. That doesn’t change when you move to an agile way …
Agility and Obligation
Developing software is a complex task. Especially the interaction between client and contractor is very challenging because de facto the client cannot completely describe his …
Requirements Engineering and Agile
These days a growing number of people are becoming interested in agile product development. Many people work in an agile environment, or would like to do so. Some people think in …
Customized Agile RE Process
‘Classic upfront Requirements Engineering before the start of a project costs too much time and money!’ …nowadays, phrases like this reflect most customers’ view of heavy …
Readable requirements
At the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems, Word templates have been created for entering requirements using the “Information Mapping®” method. The templates developed in this …
Translating Exam Questions
Many Dutch students struggle with the IREB CPRE FL exam, which, in the Netherlands and Begium, was available in English only. They commented that the exam does not only test their …
Open Up
Requirements Management and Requirements Engineering are fairly well established. In Germany, the Automotive industry has been on the forefront of innovation for decades. …
Product Management
This article provides an overview on product management and our experiences with introducing, improving and deploying the role of a product manager in different industries. We …
Project Value Delivered
The quest to measure the quality of requirements through requirements metrics has been around almost as long as requirements themselves. Researchers have found that good and clear …
How agile can Requirements Engineers really be?
Agile remains a disputed approach. Despite the bold sounding claims of many articles on its proven ability to increase productivity and reduce costs, some experienced …
A key technique
This article is the second in a series of articles on requirements engineering published by Crescendo Technologies, following "This is not a requirement (of this system)" [1]. The …
Product Owner in Scrum
Scrum is today the most discussed method of agile software engineering. The connection between requirements engineering and agile methods itself is a widely discussed topic; the …
Toward Better RE
Caveat: I do not pretend to have all of the answers – I only wish to share what I’ve learned. RE Magazine has graciously provided an opportunity for me to share some general …
Innovation Arena
Prioritization of requirements is an essential activity. Most important requirements shall be developed first, optimizing the return on investment. The weak point is how to decide …
RE for Testers
Testers use requirements as the basis of test cases, review them for testability, and often participate in general requirement reviews or inspections. Unfortunately, many testers …