Requirements Engineering

Course manual 2023/2024

Course content

Requirements methods and techniques will be discussed during the lectures. If feasible the whole student group will collaborate in one real life requirements project based on the method of contextual design. Next to specific RE literature we will also study literature from psychology, law, philosophy and cognitive science to get a better understanding of the subject. Finally students will design and do an experiment to show the inherent weakness of requirements best practices, like the use of prototyping for requirement validation. This will be done from the perspective of human factors.

Study materials

Literature

• D. Kahneman 'Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment'.

   

Objectives

• You will understand why organizational and stakeholder needs are hard to express, capture and understand
• You will learn the shortcomings in the (agile) methods and best practices that are widely used
• Furthermore you will learn how to use scenarios and hard data to improve the likelihood of creating the right system

Teaching methods

• Lecture
• Seminar
• Fieldwork/excursion
• Presentation/symposium
• Self-study
• Supervision/feedback meeting

Lectures are to present and discuss different theories and provide overview. Cases are discussed to set the scene, understand issues, see how theory applies and demonstrate working and failing practices.

Lectures are in part setup as group dialogue aimed to make students think. Lecture notes provide a more structured discussion of what was treated in the lecture.

Every Monday students do a one hour workshop in which an elicitation practice is explained. 

Requirements Engineering is about knowledge engineering and creating solutions. Literature focuses on fundamental topics like how our brain works and touches upon some solutions in our field. Another fundamental topic is what we can know and what truth entails. Students have two reading tests during the course. Good results exempts them from the exam.

There is a lot of focus on practicing soft skills to elicit information. Already on the first day students have to do a number of interviews with peers. Every week students are expected to consciously engage in elicitation. A number of these have to be recorded and self assessed. Students also need to experiment. Idea is that students really improve their soft skills and get a good understanding of their own ability (and short comings). Making them highly aware that their understanding is already constrained by their knowledge acquisition.  Students need to report their work. 

Students also work on a real life case. Here they go through some steps: setting the scene with stakeholders; problem validation; scenario exploration; design and validate. The interviews done for the case are part of the interview portfolio of the students. 

Students sit with a lecturer at least once a week to talk about the case. There are also weekly sessions with students (one on one or in small groups) to sit with them for the interviews and essays.

Learning activities

Attendance

Requirements concerning attendance (TER-B).

Assessment

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Additional information

Recommended prior knowledge: Knowledge of requirement engineering, for example books of Sommerville, Robertson, van Lamsweerde, Wiegers or Pohl. 'Modeling techniques', e.g. UML diagrams to describe software behaviour.

Contact information

Coordinator

• H.L. Dekkers

Staff

• Ischa Abraham
• M. Skalistiris Pikis
• P.A. Toruński
• Bram Kuijken
• Alexander Hermans