Customer requirements and specification

Abstract To examine the problems that occur with natural language based documents. To outline what makes a good specification. To detail a simple procedure for requirements analysis and system specification. To show how mathematics is a good medium for specification. The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the faults found in customer statements of requirements and software specifications written in natural language. The purpose in doing this is twofold. First, the document given to staff who produce the software specification is the customer statement of requirements. It is important that such staff realize the nature of such documents. Second, the inadequacies of natural language as a specification medium are most manifest in statements of requirements and software specifications. Before attempting to describe the use of mathematics in system specification, it will be useful to describe the faults that it should eliminate.