Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering

Author Topic: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering  (Read 1378 times)

Offline farzanaSadia

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Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« on: November 14, 2017, 02:58:42 PM »
 Role of software requirements engineering has been evolving through stages. At the beginning of the computer industry, in 1950s, the challenge of selecting software requirements was to simplify the computational tasks, making them executable my machines. At that time, software users were mostly writing programs for themselves. At later stage, the job of in-house software developers was created. Those in-house programmers used to work in close association with major users to acquire, analyze and select requirements, which were technologically feasible to translate into software application. Technology knowledge and the ability to translate users’ requirements into software were most pressing challenge. The challenge at this phase was primarily in the area of assessing technology feasibility in capturing, analyzing and selecting requirements.

With the growth of computational need and expansion of user base of computers, major software customers started contracting out the assignment of getting custom made software delivered. In such contractual engagements, in addition to technology feasibility, the given financial and time budgets were very relevant in deciding about requirements to be translated to software applications. With the growth of software assets, compatibility and capitalization of already developed software assets started to play important role in capturing, analyzing and screening software requirements.

The third phase of software development could be termed as market driven innovation age. Instead of being in-house employees and contractors for target software customers, the focus started to shift to develop software applications targeting many customers. Upon development and launching of the application, customers voluntarily decide about the purchase of such applications. Moreover, the price of such software applications is far lower than the development cost, as the development cost is divided over many customers and the cost of replication of software is virtually zero. Such model of software development became attractive in both the supply and demand sides. In one hand, customers were getting the software at a fraction of cost of original development. On the other hand, it was opening the opportunity in the supply side to make growing profit by offering the same application to a large number of customers. But such model of software development, could be termed as market led innovation, created additional challenges for software requirements engineering.


To innovate software applications, in capturing, screening and selecting software requirements, the first question centered around the likely willingness to pay by target customer groups, and the number of customers likely to be buying the feature at certain price. Software requirements selection pays serous attention to increasing the number of likely customers, as total R&D cost is divided by the number of total customers to determine the per unit (customer) cost. The second challenge is around the likely response of the competition upon the release of the product in the market. In deciding about requirements, the challenges of dealing with the force of imitation, innovation and substitution are taken into consideration. The uncertainty of market response takes the 3rd position. Instead of releasing full blown requirements around certain major features, often time the strategy of seeding, selective release, is given consideration to test the response of the market. With the growth of Internet penetration, the 4th important area to focus is to pay attention to those software requirements which have the potential of creating network externality effect. The network externality effect is being found to be of growing importance to succeed with software innovation, as the perceived value of the product keeps growing with the growth of customer base. The 5th area of the focus is about the management of technology and innovation, and dynamics of public policy. Risk capital financing to support research and development, managing intellectual assets, and managing the development team over a long uncertain period is the 6th area in deciding about software requirements, apparently most challenging area. Apart from technology competence of translating requirements into software features, a number of factors including these six should be taken into consideration in deciding about optimum software requirements, turning software requirements capturing to engineering.
Posted 1st March by Rokon Zaman
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Offline SSH Shamma

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Re: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2017, 03:07:37 PM »
Good Notes, mam.



Syeda Sumbul Hossain Shamma
Lecturer
Software Engineering, FSIT
Daffodil International University
Syeda Sumbul Hossain
Lecturer, SWE
Daffodil International University
Contact No. 01918455555

Offline Nusrat Jahan Momo

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Re: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2017, 10:57:00 AM »
This article is useful for software requirement researchers.

Offline mushfiq.swe

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Re: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2017, 07:23:31 PM »
Thank you for sharing such important information.
Muhammad Mushfiqur Rahman
Lecturer, Dept. of SWE,
FSIT, DIU.

Offline SSH Shamma

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Re: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2017, 08:47:18 PM »
 :)
Syeda Sumbul Hossain
Lecturer, SWE
Daffodil International University
Contact No. 01918455555

Offline Tapushe Rabaya Toma

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Re: Evolving Roles of Software Requirements Engineering
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2018, 03:53:27 PM »
Thank you for sharing such important information.  :)