Task: Detail the System Requirements
This task describes how to detail the system requirements.
Discipline:  Requirements
Purpose
  • To refine, if necessary, the Supplementary Specifications for the system.
  • To produce a composite artifact, the System Requirements Specification, which combines the specification of required functional capability and required constraints.
Relationships
Steps
Refine the Supplementary Specifications

The Supplementary Specifications are refined and augmented based on evaluation feedback and continued work on the Use-Case Model (in allocating non-functional requirements, such as performance requirements, to use cases and use-case black-box steps). Consult the artifact Checklist: Supplementary Specifications as part of evaluation.

If requirements are traced or otherwise formally managed, make sure that each requirement is clearly identified and labeled and updated in the Work Product: Requirements Attributes.

Generate supporting reports

Requirements are often stored and managed using one or more tools. For example, tools for:

This step generates documentation from these tools so that the information can be easily reviewed.

When using Rational tools, the following reports are applicable:

If specialized tools are not used for capturing the requirements, then this step is not applicable (all software requirements would be written directly in the documentation).

Package the requirements for review

For less formal projects, this step consists of bundling the relevant reports and hand-generated documentation, with sufficient supporting material so requirements can be effectively reviewed.

On more formal projects, the Work Product: System Requirements Specification collects and organizes all requirements for the project. The System Requirements Specification is simply a composition of the Use-Case Model (representing the functional capabilities) and the Supplementary Specifications (capturing all other requirements). If the project is required to deliver a System Requirements Specification as a single artifact in true document form, then this can be done by extracting reports from the Use-Case Model and individual use cases (see Report: Use-Case Model Survey and Report: Use-Case Specification ) and combining these with the Supplementary Specifications.

The template provided with the Work Product: System Requirements Specification serves as a checklist when the Supplementary Specifications and Use-Case Model artifacts are produced, because these component artifacts actually contain all of the needed content. If the project decides not to produce Supplementary Specifications or a Use-Case Model (or decides not to present system requirements to the customer in this way), then the System Requirements Specification template can be used to guide content production.