ABSTRACT
Poor requirements engineering practices have led to some spectacular failures. T. A. Bahill and S. J. Henderson analyzed several high-profile projects to determine if their failure was due to poor requirements development, requirements verification, or system validation. Requirements risk management involves the proactive analysis, identification, monitoring, and mitigation of any factors that can threaten the integrity of the requirements engineering process. This chapter focuses on the mitigation of requirements risk through the analysis of the requirements specification document itself. Requirements validation and verification involves review, analysis, and testing to ensure that a system complies with its requirements. Walkthroughs or peer/team reviews are an informal methodology to detect errors and improve requirements quality. Inspections are a method of requirement quality control that can be informal (ad hoc) or highly structured. Stakeholders tend to express their requirements in terms of operations and actions rather than goals.
