Specifying Good Requirements

By: Donald Firesmith

Abstract

Many of the characteristics of properly specified requirements have been well known for many years, at least among professional requirements engineers. Yet most requirements specifications seen today in industry still include many poor-quality requirements. Far too many requirements are ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent, incorrect, infeasible, unusable, and/or not verifiable (e.g., not testable). To combat this sad state of affairs, this column provides a questionnaire that can be used when specifying and technically evaluating requirements.

Cite as:

Donald Firesmith, “Specifying Good Requirements”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 2, no. 4 (July 2003), pp. 77-87, doi:10.5381/jot.2003.2.4.c7.

PDF | HTML | DOI | BiBTeX | Tweet this | Post to CiteULike | Share on LinkedIn

The JOT Journal   |   ISSN 1660-1769   |   DOI 10.5381/jot   |   AITO   |   Open Access   |    Contact