10

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

A widely shared piece of conventional wisdom states that requirements

constitute a complete statement of what the system will do without referring

to how it will do it. The resiliency of this view is indeed surprising since

researchers have long argued against this simple distinction. Clearly, requirements and design are interdependent, as practitioners

surely realize. Perhaps the continuing prevalence of the ‘‘what versus how’’

distinction is due to the well meaning desire on the part of requirements of

engineers to avoid over-constraining implementers.