Requirements – they’re not always expressed well

As part of my BEng(CSE) degree @ UTS, I’m doing some formal study in software engineering. I know, I know … it’s been a long time coming. At least there’s no coding required for this subject, so I can concentrate on that for work instead .. image:: /images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

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We got our first assignment late last week and have to translate a set of customer requirements into a Requirements Specification document. Which is all well and good except that some of them aren’t really expressed very well. I’m actually really glad to be doing this subject now, having spent time as a sysadmin, a troubleshooter, a systems architect and a kernel developer, because I can bring all those years of experience to bear in looking at the questions and assessing their suitability for inclusion in a formal requirements document.I do have to be careful that I don’t drown out my other group members with “I’ve seen that fail before, let’s not try it now” or similarly negative and smothering comments. It’s not just me doing this assignment and I do want to maximise the result we get for it. If I take over, though, the other guys won’t learn as much as they probably should. It’s going to be an interesting semester.