Requirements engineering

Abstract

Requirements engineering (RE) aims to ensure that systems meet the needs of their stakeholders including users, sponsors, and customers. Often considered as one of the earliest activities in software engineering, it has developed into a set of activities that touch almost every step of the software development process. In this chapter, we reflect on how the need for RE was first recognised and how its foundational concepts were developed. We present the seminal papers on four main activities of the RE process, namely, (1) elicitation, (2) modelling and analysis, (3) assurance, and (4) management and evolution. We also discuss some current research challenges in the area, including security requirements engineering as well as RE for mobile and ubiquitous computing. Finally, we identify some open challenges and research gaps that require further exploration.