Advanced Testing of Systems-of-Systems, Volume 2

7Requirements Management

Requirements are the basis for the design and testing of each of the systems, subsystems, equipment, components and software. It is therefore essential to define clear and testable, non-ambiguous and non-contradictory requirements. In a system-of-systems, the number of requirements is usually huge (several thousand or even several tens of thousands). The requirements must therefore be identified in a unique way, linked to the functionalities and the components (systems and subsystems, equipment, etc.), and serve as a basis for both the developments and the tests which will demonstrate their proper implementation. The number of requirements and their changes over time justify the use of requirements management and processing tools. It is also recommended in ISO/IEC/IEEE29148 (2018).

In the context of this chapter, we will use the term “requirement” to represent what is required as development; in Agile parlance we will speak more of epics (Epic), characteristics (Feature) or User Story. The concept is similar, and the applicable rules and practices are identical.

7.1. Requirements documents

In a system-of-systems, the technical and functional requirements can be present in several documents, with various levels of granularity. The standard (ISO/IEC/IEEE29148 2018) proposes:

– business requirements specification (BRS);

– stakeholder requirements specification (StRS);

– system requirements specification (SyRS);

– software requirements specification (SRS); ...