System Requirements Engineering

2A Method for Requirements Engineering

2.1. Proposal of a requirements engineering method

Our proposal is part of the Process Methods Tools Environment paradigm introduced by J. N. Martin [MAR 94] and widely used in systems engineering. The systems engineering processes as described in the standards define the activities and expected results “what to do?”. Tools, most often computerized, define techniques to carry out these activities “what to do with them?”.

The methods are the essential link to define the mechanisms for implementation “how to do it?”. They will obviously depend on the processes and tools, and also on the environment in which they will be used: sectors of activity, organizations, types of projects, types of systems, collaboration, cooperation, interdisciplinary connections, multiculturalism, etc.

As stated in the previous chapter, regardless of the systems engineering approach used within the organization, different processes or sub-processes are dedicated to requirements engineering (needs or stakeholder requirements, system requirements, component requirements). In this chapter, we propose ONE¹ method² that uses SysML to implement these sub-processes. It may, or perhaps will definitely have to be amended to integrate as closely as possible into its environment (another associated method – see Chapter 5, another tool – see section 4.4 in Chapter 4, etc.). Figure 2.1 shows the position of such a sub-process, which is represented here in BPMN³. We use this ...