Requirements engineering process is regarded as one of the most important parts of building a software system. The process main goal is to determine what is to be implemented, determining the needs for, and the intended external behavior of the system.

This process can be divided in two main complementary areas. Gathering new information and managing existing information. For other words we can divide the process in two different but inter related activities: Requirements development and Requirements management.

There are four activities regarding requirements development. You will need to start to identify potential new requirements, analyze the new information, validate, and document them.

As soon as you gather information you will have to concern on managing it. That’s where management activities start. Requirement changes and impact analysis must be performed in order to keep the project on track. Different type of metrics should also be extracted in order to improve your process.

Requirements elicitation

Gathering, discovering, creating new requirements. Start to organize all the information by creating different requirement types where you can store different kind of information.

Analysis

Understanding requirements. Represent the requirements in multiple different points of view, in both textual and graphical, using diagrams, prototypes and test cases. These different views will reveal insights and problems that no single view can provide. Attach extra information, share different ideas from all stakeholders, and prioritize the requirements.

Specification

Documenting requirements. Document them in some consistent, accessible, and reviewable way by using one of the in-box available reports.

Validation

Determining that requirements are correct, of high quality, and will satisfy user needs. You can do that by inspecting requirements documents and testing the requirements.