Requirements Engineering

The course is a compulsory course in the N1SOF Software Engineering and Management Bachelor's Programme.

To be eligible for this course, students must have completed a 7.5 credits course in programming (e.g., Fundamentals of Programming, or equivalent) and 7.5 credit project course (e.g., Project: Agile Software Project Management).

The course provides students with an introduction to the field of requirements engineering. It provides a solid foundation by defining foundational concepts like stakeholders, requirements, and specifications. It presents the process of eliciting, identifying, modeling, and documenting the requirements of a software product. The course covers desired characteristics of requirements. Emphasis is given to concepts and techniques such as quality requirements (e.g., usability, sustainability, security, privacy), creative requirements, and scenarios.

On successful completion of the course the student will be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

• Identify key RE concepts such as functional and non-functional
  requirements, stakeholders, assumptions, constraints, specifications, priority, and scenarios
• Understand quality characteristics of requirements
• Describe important differences between a variety of requirements modeling techniques
• Describe the benefits and drawbacks between specific elicitation techniques
• Explain the role of verification and validation in RE
• Identify key non-functional requirements for software, such as usability, security, safety, and sustainability.

Competence and skills

• Apply creativity techniques to generate requirements
• Apply concepts to write and evaluate requirements with high quality
• Capture requirements in different textual formats
• Draw several types of requirements models
• Link textual requirements to requirements as captured in models
• Use various techniques to prioritize requirements

Judgement and approach

• Evaluate and select between available elicitation techniques
• Evaluate the suitablity of ideas generated via requirements creativity techniques
• Evaluate benefits and drawbacks of different requirements representations
• Evaluate the impact of RE projects on sustainability goals such as reduced inequalities or responsible production and consumption.

The teaching consists of lectures, group work, exercises, as well as supervision in connection to the exercises.

Language of instruction: English

The course is examined by an individual written exam carried out in an examination hall at the end of course and written assignments normally carried out in groups of students.

The assignments part is examined on the basis of solutions to compulsory problems handed in during the course and on the basis of individual contribution to the group work.

Retake examinations of the assignments part consist of written group or individual assignments.

If a student who has twice received a failing grade for the same examination component wishes to change examiner ahead of the next examination session, such a request should be made to the department in writing and should be approved by the department unless there are special reasons to the contrary (Chapter 6 Section 22 of the Higher Education Ordinance).

If a student has received a recommendation from the University of Gothenburg for study support for students with disabilities, the examiner may, where it is compatible with the learning outcomes of the course and provided that no unreasonable resources are required, decide to allow the student to sit an adjusted exam or alternative form of assessment.

In the event that a course has ceased or undergone major changes, students are to be guaranteed at least three examination sessions (including the ordinary examination session) over a period of at least one year, but no more than two years after the course has ceased/been changed. The same applies to internships and professional placements (VFU), although this is restricted to just one additional examination session.

Sub-courses

1. Written hall examination (Skriftlig salstentamen), 4.5 credits
   Grading scale: Pass with distinction (5), Pass with credit (4), Pass (3) and Fail (U)
2. Assignments (Inlämningsuppgifter), 3 credits
   Grading scale: Pass with distinction (5), Pass with credit (4), Pass (3) and Fail (U)

The grading scale comprises: Pass with distinction (5), Pass with credit (4), Pass (3) and Fail (U).
Students receive grades on the assignments and the exam parts of the course. To pass the whole course, students must pass both the assignment and exam parts of the course. If both parts have a passing grade, the final grade is determined by combining the scales
for both the exam and the assignments, with the exam grade weighted slightly higher.

The results of and possible changes to the course will be shared with students who participated in the evaluation and students who are starting the course.

The course replaces the course DIT046, 7.5 credits. The course cannot be included in a degree which contains DIT046 or DAT356. Neither can the course be included in a degree which is based on another degree in which the course DIT046 or DAT356 is included.