Establishment of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 66

Chapter 5
Establishment of Requirements
5.1 Introduction to Establishment of Requirements
Merriam Webster's dictionary defines the term ''Establishment'' as ''a settled
arrangement'', ''as established order of society'' among other definitions. CMMI
model document for development used the term ''establishment'' in the context of
requirements but left it without a definition. The term ''establishment'' is defined
here on the lines of the Merriam Webster's dictionary. That is, ''Establishment of
requirements in a software project is defined as the documentation of the project
requirements conforming to organizational documentation guidelines, carrying out
applicable quality assurance activities, obtaining the required approvals and
subjecting the document to the rigor of organizational configuration management.''
The definition includes four key aspects, namely,
1. Documentation—It is the act of capturing all the information compiled as
requirements in a structured manner conforming to organizational/project
documentation guidelines and formats/templates. All compiled information that
is subjected to the requirements analysis, is included in the document. Each
requirement has all the details necessary to carry out the next activity. The
resulting document is generally referred to as the Requirements Specification''
or ''Requirements Specification Document''.
2. Quality Assurance activities—These activities ensure that quality has been
built into the artifacts. Some of these activities are at an organizational level to
create an environment that fosters quality in all the work carried out in the
organization. The others are at project level which create project specific
environments for building quality into the artifact and to confirm that quality is
indeed built into the artifact. In the case of requirements management, the
environment at an organizational level includes training, processes, standards,
guidelines, formats and templates etc. and the environment at the project level
includes project plans, and project specific training, standards, guidelines,