Achieving Quality in Software Requirements

Requirements quality can be defined meaningfully only in the context of the role requirements play in the business. Measuring quality of requirements in the business context requires measuring, among other things, the following: the number of requirements (or features) being addressed and their complexity; and which requirements will be satisfied. Quality can only be measured as a quantification of the true merit of the software. This chapter is organized into sections that correspond to each of the activities that comprise requirements management: (i) collecting and refining the understanding of user needs (often called requirements elicitation); (ii) creating a list of potential features for a solution system (often called feature specification); (iii) deciding which features should be incorporated to achieve maximal results (often called requirements triage); and (iv) the detailing of the external behavior of those features selected for inclusion (often called requirements specification).