There is a distinct difference between requirements and specifications. A requirement is a condition needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective. A specification is a document that specifies, in a complete, precise, verifiable manner, the requirements, design, behavior, or other characteristics of a system, and often, the procedures for determining whether these provisions have been satisfied. For example, a requirement for a car could be that the maximum speed to be at least 120mph. The specification for this requirement would include technical information about specific design aspects. Another term that is commonly seen in books and papers is requirements specification which is a document that specifies the requirements for a system or component. It includes functional requirements, performance requirements, interface requirements, design requirements, and developement standards. So the requirements specification is simply the requirements written down on paper.
The first step toward developing accurate and complete specifications is to establish correct requirements. As easy as this sounds, establishing correct requirements is extremely difficult and is more of an art than a science. There are different steps one can take toward establishing correct requirements. Although some of the suggestions sound fairly obvious, actually puttting them into practice may not be as easy as it sounds. The first step is to negotiate a common understanding. There is a quote by John von Neumann that states "There's no sense being exact about something if you don't even know what you're talking about." [Gause89] Communication between the designer and customer is vital. There is no point in trying to establish exact specifications if the designers and customers cannot even agree on what the requirements are.
Problem stems from ambiguities in stating requirements. For example, say the requirement states that we want to create a means that would transport a group of people from Boston to Washington D.C. Possible interpretations of this requirement includes building a bus, train, or airplane, among other possibilities. Although each of these transportation devices satisfy the requirement, they are certainly very different. Ambiguous requirements can be caused by missing requirements, ambiguous words, or introduced elements. The above requirement does not state how fast the people should be transported from Boston to Washington D.C. Taking an airplane would certainly be faster than riding a bus or train. These are also missing requirements. "a group of people" in the above requirement is an example of ambiguous words. What exactly does "group" imply? A group can consist of 5 people, 100 people, 1000 people, etc. The requirement states to "create a means" and not "design a transportation device". This is an example of introduced elements where an incorrect meaning slipped into the discussion. It is important to eliminate or at least reduce ambiguities as early as possible because the cost of them increases as we progress in the development life cycle.
Often the problem one has in establishing correct requirements is how to get started. One of the most important things in getting started is to ask questions. Context-free questions are high-level questions that are posed early in a project to obtain information about global properties of the design problem and potential solutions. Examples of context-free questions include who is the client?, what is the reason for solving this problem?, what environment is this product likely to encounter?, and what is the trade-off between time and value?. These questions force both sides, designer and customer, to look at the higher issues. Also, since these questions are appropriate for any project, they can be prepared in advance. Another important point is to get the right people involved. There is no point in discussing requirements if the appropriate people are not involved in the discussion. Related to getting the right people involved is making meetings work. Having effective meetings is not as easy as it sounds. However, since they play a central role in establishing requirements it is essential to know how to make meetings work. There are important points to keep in mind when creating effective meetings, which include creating a culture of safety for all participants, keeping the meeting to an appropriate size, and other points. [Gause89]
Exploring the possibilities is another important step toward generating correct requirements. Ideas are essential in establishing correct requirements, so it is important that people can get together and generate ideas. Every project will also encounter conflicts. Conflicts can occur from personality clashes, people that cannot get along, intergroup prejudice such as those between technical people and marketing people, and level differences. It is important that a facilitator is present to help resolve conflicts.
In establishing requirements, it is important to specifically establish the functions, attributes, constraints, preferences, and expectations of the product. Usually in the process of gaining information, functions are the first ones to be defined. Functions describe what the product is going to accomplish. It is also important to determine the attributes of a product. Attributes are characteristics desired by the client, and while 2 products can have similar functions, they can have competely different attributes. After all the attributes have been clarified and attached to functions, we must determine the constraints on each of the atrributes. Preferences, which is a desirable but optional condition placed on an attribute, can also be defined in addition to its constraints. Finally, we must determine what the client's expectations are. This will largely determine the success of the product.
Testing is the final step on the road to establishing correct requirements. There are several testing methods used, as listed below. [Gause89]
Establishing good requirements requires people with both technical and communication skills. Technical skills are required as the embedded system will be highly complex and may require knowledge from different engineering disciplines such as electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Communication skills are necessary as there is a lot of exchange of information between the customer and the designer. Without either of these two skills, the requirements will be unclear or inaccurate.
It is essential that requirements in safety critical embedded systems are clear, accurate, and complete. The problem with requirements is that they are often weak about what a system should not do. In a dependable system, it is just as important to specify what a system is not suppose to do as to specfiy what a system is suppose to do. These systems have an even greater urgency that the requirements are complete because they will only be dependable if we know exactly what a system will do in a certain state and the actions that it should not perform. Requirements with no ambiguities will also make the system more dependable. Extra requirements will usually be required in developing a dependable embedded system. For example, in developing a dependable system for non-computer-literate people, extra requirements should be specified to make the system safe even in exceptional or abusive situations.
Requirements and Specification's Role in System Design
Systems exist everywhere in the universe we live in. The universe can be considered a system, and so can an atom. A system is very loosely defined and can be considered as any of the following definitions. [Blanchard90]
The conceptual system design is the first stage in the systems design life cycle and an example of the systems definition requirements process is shown in Figure 1. Each individual box will be explain below.
Figure 1: Example of system requirements definition process [Blanchard90]
In establishing system requirements, the first step is to define a need. This need is based on a want or desire. Usually, an individual or organization identifies a need for an item or function and then a new or modified system is developed to fulfill the requirement. After a need is defined, feasibility studies should be conducted to evaluate various technical approaches that can be taken. The system operational requirements should also be defined. This includes the definition of system operating characteristics, maintenance support concept for the system, and identification of specific design criteria. In particular, the system operational requirements should include the following elements. [Blanchard90]
Basically, the system operational requirements define how the system will be used in the field by the customer.
- Mission definition - Identification of the primary operating mission of the system in addition to alternative and secondary missions.
- Performance and physical parameters - Definition of the operating characteristics or functions of the system.
- Use requirements - Anticipation of the use of the system.
- Operational deployment or distribution - Identification of transportation and mobility requirements. Includes quantity of equipment, personnel, etc. and geographical location.
- Operational life cycle - Anticipation of the time that the system will be in operational use.
- Effectiveness factors - Numbers specified for system requirements. Includes cost-system effectiveness, mean time between maintenance(MTBM), failure rate, maintenance downtime, etc.
- Environment - Definition of the environment in which the system is expected to operate.
Usually, in defining system requirements, the tendency is to cover areas that are related to performance as opposed to areas that are related to support. However, this means that emphasis is only placed on part of the system and not the whole system. It is essential to take into consideration the entire system when defining system requirements. The system maintenance concept basically describes the overall support environment that the product is supposed to exist in.
After the system operational requirements and system maintenance concept are defined, the preliminary system analysis is performed to determine which approach for system development should be adopted. The following process is usually applied. [Blanchard90]
1. Define the problem - The first step always begin with clarifying the objectives, defining the concerned issues, and limiting the problem so that it can be effectively studied.After the preliminary system analysis, advanced system planning will be done. Early system planning takes place from the identification of a need through the conceptual design phase. The results from these planning will be defined as either technical requirements included in the specifications or management requirements included in a program management plan. The documents associated with these requirements are shown in Figure 2. The system specification includes information from the operational requirements, maintenance concept, and feasibility analysis. The System Engineering Management Plan(SEMP) contains three sections. The technical program planning and control part describes the program tasks that have to be planned and developed to meet system engineering objectives such as work breakdown structure, organization, risk management, etc. The system engineering process part describes how the system engineering process applies to program requirements. Finally, the engineering specialty integration part describes the major system-level requirements in the engineering specialty areas such as reliability, maintainability, quality assurance, etc.
2. Identify feasible alternatives - All the alternatives should be considered to make sure that the best approach is chosen.
3. Select the evaluation criteria - The criteria for the evaluation process can vary considerably, so the appropriate ones must be chosen.
4. Applying modeling techniques - A model or series of models should be used.
5. Generate input data - The requirements for appropriate input data should be specified.
6. Manipulate the model - After data is collected and inputed, the model may be used. Analysis after using the model will lead to recommendation for some kind of action.
Figure 2: Program documentation [Blanchard90]
Finally, the conceptual design review is also performed during the conceptual design stage. It usually occurs early in the system engineering development life cycle after the operational requirements and the maintenance concept have been defined. [Blanchard90]
It is very important to verify that the requirements are correctly implemented in the design. This is done with requirements traceability which is usually refered to as "the ability to follow the life of a requirement, in both forwards and backwards direction (i.e. from its origins, through its development and specification, to its subsequent deployment and use, and through periods of on-going refinement and iteration in any of these phases.)" [Ramesh95] Requirements traceability captures the relationships between the requirements, specifications, and design. Standards for systems development such as the one from the U. S. Department of Defense (standard 2167A) require that requirements traceability be used. Although requirments traceability has been around for more than 2 decades, there has been no consensus as to what kind of information should be used as part of a traceability scheme. The problem is that the definition of traceability differs when taken from different points of view of the system.(i.e. the view of the system is different for customer, project manager, test engineer, etc.) Each organization has a different purpose and methodology for requirements tracing. While it is not the purpose of this paper to dwell into a long discussion about requirements traceability, a short example of the methodology used at one organization will be given. [Ramesh95]
The projects typically involved at Abbott Laboratories Diagnostics Division are real-time, embedded, in vitro diagnostic instruments approaching 200,000 lines of code. They have found that traceability aids project managers in verification, cost reduction, accountability and change management. Traceability helps in verifying that software requirements are satisfied in the design process and that they are tested for during the verification process. Traceability allows the allocation of product requirements early in the development cycle thereby reducing costs of correcting defects (due to untraceable components) in the integration and system test phase. Providing quantitative traceability analyses also allows for accountability in making sure that project milestones are approved, deliverables are verified, and customers are satisfied. The documentation from traceability also keeps information organized during changes in staff or management.
A specific in vitro diagnostic instrument contained approximately 175,000 lines of source code and approximately 1,600 software requirements that needed to be traced. While the division also has an automated traceability system (ATS) that allowed them to automate many of the tasks, it was the process and not the tool that led to their success. The main purpose of the traceability program is to identify links and determine that the links are complete and accurate. The traceability analysis consists of 4 aspects: forward requirements analysis, reverse requirements trace, forward test analysis, and reverse test trace. These steps are used to trace each software requirement through its design elements and test traces. The ATS can be used to design documentation matrices and test matrices that is used to perform the different analyses required. The ATS is also able to give feedback about the design components that are not yet implemented during the life cycle. In the test phase, the ATS gives input to what requirements are covered by the test cases. [Watkins94]
There are many requirements and specification standards. They are mostly military standards as opposed to "commercial" standards. In addition, most of the standards are in the systems engineering area, and in particular deals with the software aspects. A good reference to many of these standards is Standards, Guidelines, and Examples on System and Software Requirements Engineering from the IEEE Computer Society Press. [Dorfman90] This book is a compilation of international requirements standards and U. S. military standards. There is also a section on requirements analysis methodologies and examples. Listed below are several relevant standards, but the list is in no means exhaustive.
There also exists requirements simulation tools. Foresight, produced by Nu Thena Systems, allows designers to capture system requirements and designs into graphical executable system models. These models can be analyzed and simulated to ensure requirements correctness. [Nu Thena99] The SES workbench is a system-level simulation software tool that focuses on behavioral and performance modeling. [SES99] Rational Rose is a visual modeling tool that among other features, allows UML modeling. [Rational99] The trend is towards executable requirements and simulations.
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is an object-oriented modeling language for the specification of complex systems. UML represents a large effort from a number of methodologists to construct a common means of describing complex systems using object orientation. It is a specification language and not a development process so there are no details given on the features and how and when you link them together during systems development. UML is a relatively new language, and is still going through debate about the feasibility of using them in embedded systems. The main concerns about using an object oriented language for real-time embedded systems is about the speed and size of the application. Some points in support of object-oriented programming for embedded systems are that objects are effecient, developers can write larger systems with fewer defects in less time using OO methods instead of structured methods, and OO can be implemented in any language, including assembly language. [Douglass98] Other people have also stated arguments against using UML for embedded systems. In particular, restrictions in architectural modeling was cited as one shortfall. For example, there are no predefined node stereotypes to help improve standardization and the lack of these predefined stereotypes means there is no capability to capture information in depth to fully describe the operational properties of the system. Another shortfall deals with deficiencies in concurrency modeling and schedulability. However, UML is still relatively new and only time will tell if it is effective in the specification and development of embedded systems. [Moore98]
It would also be very helpful to have a technique that can assist in a structured development of correct and accurate requirements. In particular, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a method for the structured product planning and development that enables a development team to specify clearly the customer's wants and needs, and then evaluate each proposed product or service capability systematically in terms of its impact on meeting those needs. QFD is based on matrices that show the relationships between, for example, a customer need and a feature of the system. Figure 3 shows an example of a matrix that gives the relationship for each row and column. For example, say the rows defines customer wants in a car. Lets say A is the car looks cool and B is the car never breaks. The columns can be specific features of the car. Lets say 1 is good gas mileage and b is aerodynamic styling. Each box represents the relationship between a customer want and a feature of the car. A car with good gas mileage is not related to the car looking cool, so their is no relation. However, a car with aerodynamic styling would look cool so their is a strong relation. Similarly, a car with that never breaks has a possible relation with good gas relation but not much relation with aerodynamic styling. [Cohen95]
Figure 3: Example of matrix used in QFD