Course Aim

The Requirements Writing course provides attendees with an overview of the practice of writing textual requirements and is therefore ideally suited to those involved in the drafting, reviewing, or approving of function and performance specifications (particularly in the Defence environment). The course provides a formal framework for requirements writing but also has a strong practical element with opportunities for practice through a number of exercises. No particular background is required for this course, although some familiarity with the systems engineering and project management is assumed. Attendees receive a copy of the presenter’s book Requirements Practice.

Course Outline

Introduction: Brief revision of systems, systems engineering, and the role of requirements engineering | Overview of requirements engineering | Relevance and benefits of requirements engineering

Requirements Engineering Framework: Concepts, needs and requirements | Requirements Framework | Life-cycle concepts | What is a requirement? | Types of requirements | Requirement characteristics | Requirements attributes | Emergent properties

Requirements Engineering:  Definitions | Why we need requirements | Why we need requirements engineering | Requirements elicitation and elaboration | Difficulties in requirements elicitation | Requirements elicitation techniques | Requirements validation | Characteristics of the requirement set | Requirements management | Requirements traceability | Requirements management tools | Requirements engineering tools (requirements breakdown structure and functional flow block diagrams)

Conceptual Design Activities: Revision | Mission, goals and objectives tutorial | Requirements Breakdown Structures (RBS) |Context diagram | Operational scenarios

Writing Requirements: INCOSE Guidelines for good requirements | Standard requirements structure | Requirements language | Rules for avoiding ambiguity | Rules for writing requirements | Requirements review tutorial

Requirements Writing Exercises: A number of practical exercises are conducted to reinforce the rules for writing requirements. Attendees first practise identifying and correcting errors on requirements and then build on that experience to write requirements starting with the development of mission goals and objectives and then developing suitable context diagrams and RBS. Finally, attendees undertake a review of a set of requirements looking for errors in individual requirements as well as inconsistency in the set.

Course Material

The following resources will be provided to attendees of this course:

1. A copy of the authors book Requirements Practice.

2. A PDF copy of the PowerPoint presentations used for the course.