Software Architect's Handbook

Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is a method in which existing code is analyzed to determine the requirements. It is similar to the document analysis technique in that it assumes that there are existing artifacts to analyze. This is not always the case when designing a new software system. It also requires access to the source code, and someone with the technical skill to analyze the code and extract requirements from it.

It is a time-consuming technique but might be used as a last resort if other techniques are not possible. For example, if stakeholders are not available to you, or the ones who are available to you are not knowledgeable, many of the other techniques may not be viable. If there is also a lack of documentation, then ...