Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach

Chapter 28. Technical Methods for Specifying Requirements

Key Points

• Technical methods for specifying requirements are appropriate when the requirement description is too complex for natural language or if you cannot afford to have the specification misunderstood.

• Technical methods include pseudocode, finite state machines, decision trees, activity diagrams, entity-relationship models, object-oriented analysis, and structured analysis.

Throughout this book, we have assumed that most requirements will be written in the team's natural language, be it in the form of a traditional statement or via the use-case method. We also suggest that requirements be augmented with diagrams, tables, or charts or other techniques to help clarify the meaning of a user ...