A Good Practice Guide

Requirements engineering is the process of discovering, documenting
and managing the requirements for a computer-based system. The goal
of requirements engineering is to produce a set of system
requirements which, as far as possible, is complete, consistent,
relevant and reflects what the customer actually wants. Although
this ideal is probably unattainable, the use of a systematic
approach based on engineering principles leads to better
requirements than the informal approach which is still commonly
used. This book presents a set of guidelines which reflect the best
practice in requirements engineering. Based on the authors'
experience in research and in software and systems development,
these guidelines explain in an easy-to-understand way how you can
improve your requirements engineering processes. The guidelines are
applicable for any type of application and, in general, apply to
both systems and software engineering. The guidelines here range
from simple 'common sense' to those which propose the introduction
of complex new methods. The guidelines and process improvement
schemes have been organised so that you can pick and choose
according to your problems, goals and available budget. There are
few dependencies between guidelines so you can introduce them in
any order in your organisation. Guidelines presented in the
book

* are consistent with ISO 9000 and CMM

* are ranked with cost/benefit analysis

* give implementation advice

* can be combined and applied to suit your organisation's
needs

* are supported by a web page pointing to RE tools and resources