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Software requirements

Software requirements for a system are the description of what the system should do, the service or services that it provides and the constraints on its operation. The IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology defines a requirement as: A condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective. A condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document. A documented representation of a condition or capability as in 1 or 2. The activities related to working with software requirements can broadly be broken down into elicitation, analysis, specification, and management. Note that the wording Software requirements is additionally used in software release notes to explain, which depending software packages are required for a certain software to be built/installed/used. Requirements elicitation Elicitation is the gathering and discovery of requirements from stakeholders and other sources. A variety of techniques can be used such as joint application design (JAD) sessions, interviews, document analysis, focus groups, etc. Elicitation is the first step of requirements development. Requirements analysis Analysis is the logical breakdown that proceeds from elicitation. Analysis involves reaching a richer and more precise understanding of each requirement and representing sets of requirements in multiple, complementary ways. Requirements Triage or prioritization of requirements is another activity which often follows analysis. This relates to Agile software development in planning phase, e.g. by Planning poker, however it might not be the same depending on the context and nature of project and requirements or product/service that is getting build. Software requirements specification Specification involves representing and storing the collected requirements knowledge in a persistent and well-organized fashion that facilitates effective communication and change management.

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Requirements engineering
Requirements engineering (RE) is the process of defining, documenting, and maintaining requirements in the engineering design process. It is a common role in systems engineering and software engineering. The first use of the term requirements engineering was probably in 1964 in the conference paper "Maintenance, Maintainability, and System Requirements Engineering", but it did not come into general use until the late 1990s with the publication of an IEEE Computer Society tutorial in March 1997 and the establishment of a conference series on requirements engineering that has evolved into the International Requirements Engineering Conference.
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