Requirements Engineering

Analysis & Modeling

Requirements Development Process

Re-Evaluate

Elicitation

Analysis

Specification

Clarify

Validation

Re-Write

Correct and close gaps

Iterative process - Multiple-steps, Not sequential

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Definitions
Requirements Analysis
The techniques of deciding which features are
appropriate for the product based on
stakeholders needs.
To effectively analyze requirements, BIM
Engineers need to understand, define and verify
the requirements from the stakeholders view
so they can prioritize their needs before allocating
requirements to BIM.
Requirements elicited from stakeholders must be
complete and clear to validate later.
* IEEE Standard 610.12 IEEE Glossary of BIM Engineering Terminology
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Requirements Analysis
The process of analyzing the stakeholders needs
to prepare the definitions of system and BIM
requirements.
The process of transforming business needs into
system descriptions with performance parameters
and partitioning them into subsystems where
allocation to hardware and BIM can take place.
Since stakeholders and developers may have
different views and expressions, to facilitate
better understanding, BIM Engineers should use
abstract descriptions that are easy to
understand and interpret.
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Different Views
Objective: To define what the system will do
Stakeholders

Developers

Qualitative definition
Interpretation to be expected
All requests must be met
Requirements are evolving
On going process
Schedule driven
System must work

Functional definition
Precise, clear
Complete
Frozen, baseline
Must complete within time
Task driven
Good if not perfect system

How do stakeholders and developers communicate?

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Communication Is Essential
Requirements Engineering is not only a
process of gathering and discovering
requirements, but also a process of
facilitating effective communication of
these requirements among different
stakeholders.
The way in which requirements are
analyzed and documented plays an
important role in ensuring that they can be
read, analyzed, rewritten, and validated.
Requirements Engineering is an iterative
process.
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Requirements Analysis
Requirements analysis results in requirements
models.
Requirements models are user requirements
represented by diagrams, structured text (lists,
tables, matrices) or a combination.
Requirements analysis also focuses on trade-offs
among requirements to make decisions about
their relative importance to support
prioritization.
BIM Engineers are responsible to analyze all
requirements and collaborate with stakeholders to
prioritize their needs.
Requirements analysis is an iterative process.
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Why Requirements Models?

Requirements models will:
Facilitate communication between technical and
business people.
Allow project teams to look at different aspects of
user requirements from different perspectives.
Uncover missing, erroneous, vague and
conflicting requirements.
Discover interdependencies among requirements.
Allow stakeholders to view all requirements for
better understanding.

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Requirements Analysis Process

Review all requirements to ensure they
align with business goals and objectives.
Define the project scope.
Create detailed user requirements using
multiple models that will help stakeholders
better articulate their needs.
Prioritize the requirements.
Continue to analyze as more details
emerge or are revised.
Assign quality attributes as requirements
are discovered and refined.
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Requirements Analysis Process

Elicitation

(Gather Requirements)

Preliminary
Requirements

Review with
Stakeholders

Assign
Quality Attributes

Identify
Candidate
Requirements

Verify Scope
of System

Establish
Quality
Attributed
Requirements

Draft
Baselined
Requirements
Specification

(Document Requirements)

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The 4Ws + 1H Technique - 1

This technique represents answers to the
questions Who? What? When? Why? And
How?
Who Questions:
Who are the projects stakeholders?
Who will directly interact with the system?
Who will see what, when they interact with the
system?

Model Result:
Actor Table.
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The 4Ws + 1H Technique - 2

What Questions:
What do important business terms mean?
What functions in the organization interact to
share information?
What information go into or out of the system?
What are the data elements that must be
stored and how they are related.

Model results:

Glossary
Context diagram
Relationship model (Business model)
Data model & Data dictionary
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The 4Ws + 1H Technique - 3

When Questions:
When does the system need to respond or act?
When are tasks performed?
When does information change?

Model results:
Event-response table
State diagram

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The 4Ws + 1H Technique - 4

Why Questions:
Why are we motivated to enforce standards,
policies, regulations?
Why are decisions made that influence
behavior and assert business structure?

Model results:
Business policies
Business rules

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The 4Ws + 1H Technique - 5

How Questions:
How do processes operate in the business to
achieve goals?
How are tasks performed and in what
sequence?

Models results:
Process map
Use case
Data flow diagram

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Product
Vision

Detailed level

Stakeholder
Categories

Actor Table

Prototypes

Glossary

Data Model

Data Dictionary

When?

Events
Response

State Diagrams

Why?

Business
Policies

Business Rules

Decision Tree

How?

Process Map

Use cases

Scenarios, Stories

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State Data matrix

Product

What?

High levels

BIM Design & Implement

Who?

Scope

BIM

Business
Requirements

Requirements

Requirements Roadmap

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Business Rules
Every organization operates according to an
extensive set of business rules such as policies,
laws, regulations, standards, procedures,
techniques, processes etc.
A business rule is a statement that defines or
constrains some aspects of the business, it is
intended to assert structure and to control or
influence the behavior of the business.
Business rules describe the operations, definitions
and constraints that apply to an organization in
achieving its goals by setting up a set of policies,
procedures, and standard practices to be applied
consistently across organizations.
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Example
Regulations

Policies

Example:

Business Rules

Procedures

Standards

Processes

Policies: Why do we have to do it that way?

Regulations: What does the government require?
Procedures: What can and cannot be done?
Processes: What to do next?
Standards: What do we have to follow?

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Actor Table
An A ctor table identifies a ll users in terms of their
roles and responsibilities.
By identifying all actors in the same place, it may
detect missing users and determine who or what
needs to interact with the system, what roles they
play and their responsibilities.
Each actor in the table is likely to initiate at least
one use case and help uncover issues involving
where (at which physical location) to roll out the
system and in which order.
A user may have multiple roles and an actor can
represent multiple people .
For example: A Manager can be the reviewer, producer
and approver. Producers can be played by several
people.

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Example of Actor Table

Actor

Roles, Responsibilities

Job Title

Planner

Plans the project by reviewing requirements and

documenting a project plan.

Project Manager

Estimator

Estimates the project size, resources, effort, schedule.

Project Manager

Designer

Designs the project based on requirements specification.

Developer

Modelr

Implements the project based on the detailed design.

Developer

Tester

Tests the implemented Model based on test cases

and scripts.

Developer

Reviewer

Reviews project documents and processes to ensure they

meet standards, processes, procedures.

SQA

Sponsor

Oversees the project, provides budget and resources

and meets with customers.

Manager

User

Purchases product, uses the product.

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Customer

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Benefits of Actor Table

Helps detect missing system users.
Helps identify functional requirements as
user goals (use case).
Helps clarify job responsibilities.
Identifies roles and responsibilities of
people who interact with the system.
Describes each role, responsibilities.
Identifies who or what needs to interact
with the system.
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Context Diagram
A Context Diagram represents all external
entities that may interact with a system. It is the
highest level view of a system, showing the
system as a whole with its input and output
from/to external factors.
The Context Diagram is NOT a Data Flow Diagram
because it has only one function representing the
entire system or its scope.
The Context Diagram provides a visual model of
the proposed system and the outside entities that
interface with the system. It is easily understood
by the stakeholders and is used to reach
agreement on the scope of the project.
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Context Diagram
Bank Teller

Customer
Deposit Money

Response to requests

Customer
Withdraw Money

Customer

Bank

Open Account

Response to requests
Manage the Bank
Bank Teller

Customer

Check Balance

Bank Owner

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Benefits of Context Diagram

Helps stakeholders quickly and simply define the
project scope and to focus on what the system
needs as input and output.
Assists BIM Engineers to identify actors, use
cases and other data models.
Establishes scope and possible scope creep
problems as new external entities are added.
Provides a starting point for understanding the
data used by the system.
Verifies direct and indirect users identified in the
stakeholder list.
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Data Model - 1
A data model or Entity Relationship Diagram
(ERD) descr ibes how data is represented and
accessed. It formally defines data elements and
their relationships.
Business rules define how things are done and
how data models are structured. Changes in
business can lead to large changes in computer
systems and interfaces.
If relationships among data are not identified,
they can lead to replication of data, data
structure, functionality, and duplication in
development and maintenance.
If data models for different systems are different.
It will require complex interfaces between
systems which are costly.

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Data Model - 2
If data structure is not standardized, data
cannot be shared electronically with
customers and suppliers.
Data models can:
Illustrate the structure of the data after
business rules have been enforced.
Eliminate redundant data and complex data
structure.
Specify rules to maintain data integrity.
Help answer questions on which data users
need to access and save.
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Process & Data Modeling

Business Model

Process Model

Process

Data Model

Process

Data

Data

Data

Data

Logical Model
Design
Pseudo
Model

Requirements
Document
Physical Model

Application
programs
Data
Structure

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Data Model Benefits

Supports the database design.
Facilitates designing the physical data structures.
Helps the analysis requirements for any BIM that
provides reporting, querying, or decision support
functionality.
Helps answer some business questions to build
scenarios such as:
What job do I need to do today?
Who should I contact for this work?
Data needed: Job number, phone number,
address, location etc.
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Data Flow Diagram

A Data-Flow diagram (DFD) is a graphical
representation of the "flow" of data through an
information system.
A (DFD) relates inputs, processes, outputs and
shows the process that responds to an external or
temporal event.
BIM Engineers must start with a context data flow
diagram, which first shows the interaction between
the system and external agents, then works into
greater detail of the system such as:
How the system is divided into sub-systems, each of
which deals with one or more of the data flows to or from
an external agent, and which together provides all of the
functionality of the system as a whole.
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Data Flow Diagram

Bank:
Customer

Cash

Inquiries
Withdrawals
Deposits

Account Details
Account Information

Account Information

This diagram represents a banking process, which maintains customer

accounts. In this Data Flow Diagram, customers can withdraw or
deposit cash, request information about their account or update their
account detail.

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State Diagram
State diagrams are used to describe the behavior
of a system. State diagrams can describe the
possible states of an object as events occur.
A model of system behavior composed of a finite
number of states, transitions between those
states and actions.
Each diagram usually represents objects of a
single class and tracks the different states of its
objects through the system.

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Example of State Diagram

Transition condition
Transition

State

Entry action

Turn Off
Machine

On

Off

Machine On

Machine Off

Turn On
Machine

Example: A State Diagram for a Machine

that can only be turned On and Off.

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Benefits of State Diagram

Provides a visual representation of the life cycle of
a data entity when events trigger changes in data
resulting in a new state for that entity.
Support the understanding of how events impact
data.
Identifies missing requirements such as events,
business rules, data attributes, use case
preconditions, post conditions and steps.
Identifies life cycle states of critical entities.
Demonstrates the sequence of states and events
that trigger state changes.
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Summary
Since no single view of requirements provides a
complete understanding, BIM Engineers need a
combination of textual and visual requirements
representations to create a full picture of the
proposed system.
Modeling and diagrams communicate certain
information more efficiency than text can. A
picture is worth a thousand words.
However, do not assume stakeholders know how
to read models, so BIM Engineers must explain
the purpose and notations of each model and ask
stakeholders to verify them.
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Questions & Answers

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