Process

• A process is an organized set of activities, which

transforms inputs to outputs
– synonyms  procedure, method, course of action, etc.
• Examples software processes:
– Software engineering development process (SDLC)
– Requirements engineering process
– Design process
– Quality assurance process
RE Process - Inputs and Outputs
Existing
systems
information

Stakeholder Agreed
needs requirements

Organizational Requirements System

standards Engineering Process specification

System
Regulations models

Domain
information

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RE Process - Inputs and Outputs
• Existing system information
Existing
– Information about the functionality of
systems
systems to be replaced
information

– Information
Stakeholder
needs
about other systems, whichAgreed
requirements
interact with the system being specified
Organizational Requirements System
standards Engineering Process specification

System
Regulations models

Domain
information

3
RE Process - Inputs and Outputs
Existing
systems
information

Stakeholder Agreed
needs requirements

Organizational Requirements System

standards Engineering Process specification

System
Regulations models

Domain
information

4
 Socio-Cultural Issues in RE
• People Oriented Process
– Lot of human interaction involved
– Conflicts, expectations, ambiguities
• Six areas of social issues
1. Within the client organization
2. Within the requirements team
3. Between the client and the requirements team
4. Between the development and requirements teams
5. Within the development team
6. Between the development team and the client

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 Issues within the Client
Organization
• Difference of opinion, interests, conflicting
requirements because of groups
• Success of the project requires that every
group within the organization understand
different aspects of the new system

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 Issues within the Client
Organization
• Overlooked user classes
– Intended users of the system may be different from the ones
who interact with the requirements team
– The users of the system should be brought into the requirement
engineering process

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 Issues within the Client
Organization
• The requirement process reveals the
problems within the client organization, which
must be addressed by facilitating
communication among different stakeholders
• Problems of tacit knowledge
– Clients sometime do not discuss important
issues, because they think it is understood

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 Issues within the Requirements
Team
• How work is organized?
• What methods and notations are used?
• What team members think about organization and how
jelled requirement team is?
– To produce quality results, the team has to be very well-
organized
– They need to work together

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Issues Between Client Organization and
Requirements Team
• Ethical obligations – access to confidential
information
• Denial of information – it arises in situations where
the client side employee thinks he will lose job if the
project is successful
• Management of changes – If rate of change is high,
and if no effective process exists to deal with this, it
has a very negative impact on client developer
relationship

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 Issues Between Development and Requirement
Teams
• Development team needs to work very closely with the
requirements team to resolve inconsistencies and to get
details
• Problem is that in many cases, requirements team may
be disbanded or assigned other tasks

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 Issues of Development Team
• Team members may be demoralized
– There may be high turn over rate
• In Pakistan average turnover is 10 months
• Too small duration for an employee to be productive
– The deadlines may slip
• Developers dislike documentation

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 Issues Between Development Team & Client
Organization
• Development teams may have to communicate with
clients directly, to gain better understanding of the
project’s possibilities and limitations, for maintenance
– responsibility of the Project Manager to provide environment for
interaction of developers & clients

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 Cultural Issues in RE
• Cultural issues have come to light because of
advancement in communication technology such as
Internet
• Advances in the Internet and Communication
Technologies has enabled customers and organization to
collaborate with each other in geographically and
temporally dispersed environments

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 Cultural Issues in RE

1. Time zones differences

2. Language and terminology differences
3. Religious and racial differences
4. Political differences
5. Differences in business environment

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 Differences in Time Zones
• Working hours may differ by eight hours or more
• Arranging phone calls and video conferences become a
hassle
• Analysts start assuming requirements

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 Language and Terminology Differences

• Clients may speak different languages or different dialects

• Requirements errors are introduced by not understanding
other partner’s language and terminology properly
• Use of the word ‘hockey’ in Pakistan and US means two
different sports: ‘field hockey’ and ‘ice hockey’
respectively

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Language and Terminology Differences
• People and government in the US, and worldwide
scientific community consider the following
number to be a billion
1,00,00,00,000
• For the rest of the world, a billion is
10,00,00,00,00,000
• So if I say one billion to a British, he will take it as
1 with 12 zeros and if I say it to American he will
take it with 9 zeros
• Reference:http://eyefultower.com/muse/billion.htm
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 Religious and Racial Differences
• Insensitive comments on religious and racial backgrounds
of people involved in software engineering projects can
become a major hindrance in the successful execution of
the requirements engineering process

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 Political Differences
• Differences in political ideologies and personal
convictions can also lead to unprofessional environment
in the execution of the requirements engineering process
– Example: Some people do not want to work on military software
programs
– Some Muslim software developers may not like to work on
Christian or Jew religious web sites

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Political Differences
 Differences in Business
Environments
• Every society has its own culture within
the business community, which must be
understood for successful execution of the
requirements engineering process

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 Addressing Social and Cultural
Issues
• Understand social and cultural issues and
differences
• Avoid judgmental comments and offensive remarks
on un-related views and beliefs of others
• Create an environment of respect and
professionalism
• Focus on discovering the needs of the customers
• Use state-of-the-art technology to facilitate
activities in the requirements engineering process

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 Major Tasks of RE
• Two main tasks which needs to be performed in
the RE process.
– Problem analysis
• Analysis of a software problem
– Product description
• Complete specification of the desired external
behavior of the software system to be built.
– Also known as functional description, functional
requirements, or specifications

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 Problem Analysis
• Problem analysis is the first and foremost task of
requirements engineering process. It includes:
– Brainstorming, interviewing, eliciting requirements
– Identifying all possible constraints
– Expansion of information
• Complete understanding should be achieved

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 Product Description
• Product description is another task of requirements
engineering process.
– Make decisions to define the external behavior of the software
product
– Organize ideas, resolve conflicting views, and eliminate
ambiguities

“Both problem analysis and product

description run in parallel and iteratively
throughout the requirements engineering 30

process”