Requirements Document

Please use the following outline in preparing the requirements document. This outline is adapted from the generic requirements document given on page 118 of the textbook. Please adhere to this outline, to the extent of placing a stub text ("This section has been omitted" or "This section will be added later") for portions that are not ready or for parts that you feel are not appropriate to your project.

Finally, please make your documents professional. Part of your grade on the documents will depend on the appearance, organization and attention to clear writing in your documents.

Important idea:  The requirements document is not complete until you could swap it with that of another project, and the other project team could develop a design from your requirements specification.

Document Title

Requirements Document for the XYZZ project

Authors

Your names here together with email addresses.

Purpose of the document

Include, in your own words, the purpose of a requirements document.

Change History

This should be a list of each change to the document together with the date the change was made and the reason for the change (i.e., respond to client's or reviewer's comments). The first entry should be the date on which the document was first turned in to me.

Table of Contents

I use \LaTeX for much of my writing, and would be happy to give an hour's lesson in its use. I'm sure that any word processor you use will have some provision for table of contents (though I've never learned how to do it in MS Word, I'm afraid).

Section 1: Introduction

Brief description of the problem this system solves, and how it will solve the problem. For further details on this (and the following sections), please refer to the generic document outline on page118.

Please Note: All documents turned in as a part of this project should have these initial six sections.

Section 2: Glossary

Definitions of technical terms. Remember that you are writing for both a technical and a non-technical audience.

Section 3: User Requirements

Section 4: System architecture

Section 5: System Requirements

Notes:  

  • The requirements in sections 3 and 5 should be divided into sections on functional requirements and non-functional requirements
  • You might want to consider a structured approach to user and system requirements along the lines of pages 119 or 132 of the textbook. 
  • However you specify requirements, the system requirements should be traceable to the corresponding user requirements.  Please note that this may mean that you will need to repeat the user requirements in the system requirements section.

Section 6:  System Models

Section 7: System Evolution

Assumptions made in determining how the system will operate and how it will change in the future.

Section 8:  Appendices

If needed

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