Software Requirements: Specification & Analysis (SE463)

Fall 2024 Schedule

Claimer: The published outline at https://outline.uwaterloo.ca/view/nbesn3 is only a snapshot, taken at the beginning of the term, of this living, canonical, outline here, that you are looking at now. Wherever the published outline and this living, canonical outline here differ, this living, canonical outline's contents is taken as correct.

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For Other Information including about Mental Health Support, Continuity Plans, Academic Integrity, Grievance, Discipline, Academic Offenses, Appeals, a Note for Students with Disabilities, Turnitin.com, and If You Do Not Write Your Final Exam

"E", "em", and "er" are gender non-specific third-person singular pronouns in subjective, objective, and possessive forms, respectively.

Course Description:

SE 463: Introduces students to the requirements definition phase of software development; models, notations, and processes for software requirements, identification, representation, analysis, and validation. Cost estimation from early documents and specifications. View requirements for SE 463

Instructor:

This term, the instructor is Daniel Berry. You may call him "Dan". In fact, he prefers "Dan" to "Professor", "Professor Berry", and even "Daniel"!

Evaluation of Instructor at the End of the Term

You will be able to take revenge on and evaluate the course instructor at https://perceptions.uwaterloo.ca any time between Wednesday 20 November 2024 at 8:30am and Tuesday 3 December 2024 at 11:59pm (just before midnight that starts Wednesday).
Please see these slides for more detail about logging into the site and the questions it asks.

TAs:

Class Communication:

If you have a question that is not private and is not targeted directly to one of the Instructors or TAs, then send it to se463@uwaterloo.ca, the course e-mail address.

One of the TAs or the prof will answer it. If the question is deemed to be of general interest and not private, the answer, including the question WITH THE SENDER'S IDENTITY REMOVED, will be sent by e-mail to the whole class so everyone gets the benefit of the answer.

The main way that the course prof will announce things to the class is by e-mailing to everyone's watIam e-mail address. You are responsible for all information sent this way. If you prefer to receive such e-mail at a different address, please send e-mail to the course e-mail address from your watIam e-mail address, with the new e-mail address that you prefer given in the body of the message. To help you in case you delete any such messages too quickly, below you will find a link to an archive of every e-mail message sent in this manner.

Archive of E-mail Sent to Class:

Click here for an archive of the e-mail sent to the entire class.

Highest Level Course Outline:

AI = Artificial Intelligence
ML = Machine Learning
RE = Requirements Engineering
SE = Software Engineering
wrt = with respect to

  1. Administration, Plans, and Requirements of the Course
  2. Requirements Modeling
    1. RE Reference Model
    2. Domain Modeling
    3. Use-Case Modeling
    4. Assumptions and Exceptions Identification
  3. Requirements Specifications
    1. Software Requirements Specification (SRS) documents
    2. Users' Manuals
  4. SE and RE Economics
    1. Cost Estimation
    2. Classifying Requirements wrt Downstream Repair Costs
    3. RE in Agile Development
  5. RE Issues To Be Aware Of
    1. Ambiguity in Requirements Specifications
    2. Non-Functional Requirements
    3. Verification and Validation
    4. Importance of Ignorance in RE
    5. Requirements Elicitation
  6. Things to Specify
    1. User Interfaces
    2. RE for AI and ML
  7. Formal Specification Notations
    1. State Machines
    2. Linear Temporal Logic
  8. General Overview of RE
  9. Case Studies
The topics are listed in a rough order of dependency. However, the reality is that you are probably experienced enough that you can understand each topic somewhat independently. The topics that you probably will need to be able to do the project well are earlier in this list. See the Lecture Schedule for the actual order of lectures and links to the material on each topic.

Course Times and Locations:

Each week, each student should attend the Tuesday and Thursday lectures and the Monday tutorial, if it is being given.

The student is responsible for knowing anything significant that arises from any in-class discussion.

Readings:

No textbook. Notes are provided at this Web site.

References:

UML Cheat Sheets

IEEE Standard for SRSs

EVLA Array Operations Software Requirements, an example of a good SRS document

Example SRSs and User's Manual, including a local copy of the EVLA Array Operations Software Requirements (called "array-sw-rqmts.pdf")
There is also a template for SRSs in LaTeX form, called "srs.tex.txt". To use it as input to LaTeX, strip off the ".txt".

A link to the Website of Understanding Requirements, by David Gelperin, a book targeted to practitioners. The site has a collection of videos on various aspects of requirements engineering. Particularly interesting is Tutorial 1, "Simplistic Requirements Models Considered Harmful".

Workload:

The graded workload for this course consists of:
  1. a group project: some complete requirements specification of the identified scope of the group's system: This complete requirements specification can be in any of a number of forms, including, but not limited to: The key criterion for completeness is that the group, in writing the specification, is forced to flesh out all the requirements that are already present in the chosen scope of the system that is being prototyped in SE490 or in the project of your choice;
  2. some individual or group deliverables, mostly directed at helping you in the group project; and
  3. a 2.5 hour in-person final exam (assessment).
Concerning the group:

The TA of your group serves as the group's mentor and evaluates the group's project-related work.

See the slides on "Administration, Plans, and Requirements of the Course" for more detail.

General Term-Independent Project Information

How to Deliver Deliverables

Evaluation:

As indicated in overview form in the slides for "Administration, Plans, and Requirements of the Course",: You need to pass the final exam in order to pass the course.

The exam covers any and all material in the lectures and lecture slides. As indicated in the slides for "Administration, Plans, and Requirements of the Course", part of the exam is designed to be easier if you have actively participated in the project, so that overall, more of the final grade comes from the project work.

Deliverables, How to Deliver Them, Group Numbers, and Due Dates

Deliverables

Each group has a different system for which to write a specification. In the past, every group wrote its own specification of single shared system, for which the prof served as the chief customer. The prof was able to be quite precise about what was expected in all deliverables and to even prepare er own solution to the early deliverables against which each group could check its own version. This precision is not possible now.

The descriptions of the deliverables here must be general enough to fit any system, but specific enough to make it clear what is expected of each deliverable. As the term progresses, expect that the descriptions of all deliverables will change, as the prof learns what is needed and what is possible.

The first three deliverables are the three artifacts described here:

  1. Domain, Class, and World Model for Your System
  2. Use Case Model for Your System
  3. Domain Assumptions, Exceptions, Variations for Your System

All three of these should be based on the abstract you have already written for your project and have installed at the capstone repository.

If your group has not written an abstract yet, then the first deliverable includes the writing and installing of this abstract.

If, as a result of what it learns in the doing of any develiverable, your group changes its abstract, then say so in that deliverable and include in the deliverable both the before and after abstract, with the differences somehow highlighted.

As each new artifact is done, you will occasionally discover that one or more previously delivered artifacts needs to be changed. When delivering any new artifact, the updated versions of all updated, previously delivered artifacts need to be delivered as well and included in the same file as the new artifact..

If you believe that a different order of these deliverables makes sense for your project, please approach your TA and the prof to discuss a different ordering, and we will make that ordering the order of the deliverable for your project. Generally, you should try to do the deliverables in order of increasing amounts of information needed from other artifacts. The artifact that needs the least information from the others should be done first, and the artifact that needs the most information from the others should be done last.

If your project is a research project and not an implementation project, then please talk with the prof ASAP so that you, your TA, and the prof can meet to negotiate a set of meaningful deliverables that help identify the requirements for your research. Yes. Even research often has requirements! :-)

If you find that a deliverable uses a notation that is not helpful or not relevant to your system, then please appraoch the prof ASAP so that you, your TA, and the prof can meet to find a notation, perhaps domain specific, that serves the deliverable's purpose, but is helpful and relevant to your system.

In particular, for any deliverable, if the domain in which your project is situated has its own established notation for expressing the content of the deliverable,

then please consult with the prof and your TA about using that notation instead of one described in the deliverable description.

If your group has started implementating already, then do not specify what you have implemented (aw! shucks!). Instead, specify the system that you and your customer had in mind when you wrote and refined your project's abstract that is at the repository. Remember, that at the time, you got your customer's buy-in to this intent. So E is expecting something similar to that intent. In particular, it is not acceptable to produce a specification that is built from your implementation upward. For an explanation, see these same words in the page on Thoughts on the Purposes of Writing a Requirements Specification.

VERY IMPORTANT: How to deliver deliverables, describing the filenames that you must use. These file names include your group's group number.

Deliverable Due Dates and Dates of Feedback Tutorials

Due Date and Time Deliverable Date of Feedback Tutorial
     
Friday 27 September by 5:00pm Deliverable 1: Domain, Class, and World Model for Your System to the course e-mail address Monday 30 September
     
Friday 11 October by 5:00pm Deliverable 2: Use Case Model for Your System to the course e-mail address Monday 21 October
     
Monday 28 October by 5:00pm Deliverable 3: Domain Assumptions, Exceptions, Variations for Your System to the course e-mail address Monday 4 November
     
Friday 15 November by 5:00pm Deliverable 4: First Draft Specification of Your System to the course e-mail address Monday 25 November
     
Friday 22 November by 5:00pm Assignment 1: Ambiguity Exercise, an optional excercise of your own understanding, for feedback and no points, to the course e-mail address Monday 25 November
     
Thursday 5 December by 5:00pm Deliverable 5: Final Draft Specification of Your System to the course e-mail address  
     
Tuesday 10 December 12:30pm--3:00pm EST (2.5 hours in-person) in TBA Final Exam ( Incompleteness Policy            Sample Final Exams)  
     

Example Solutions to Early Deliverables

You can find past whole-class projects and possible solutions to their early deliverables in the subdirectories of the directory PastProjectsAndDelivs.

Feedback on Deliverables

You can find slides with the prof's feedback on any deliverable by clicking on the date of its tutorial in the table above, after it has become a link.

Caveat on Deliverables

Berry says, "A number of you will run the two courses, SE463 and SE490, together in your minds and start considering time spent doing the deliverables for this class as taking time away from doing things in the capstone. NO NO NO!!!!

No matter what, you have to do the homework in this class. I could have made you do a totally unrelated project. You would have to spend the same amount of time on it. You would not be able to spend the same time on the project, but you would not consider it as diverting time away from one task of the project to another.

NO matter what, you will not have as much time on the project as you would have if you were not taking SE463. What I have done is make the SE463 project be related to your capstone project. It might or might not inform the capstone. If it doesn't, there is no loss, because you never had the time any way. But, if it DOES, then wow, you have a gift!!!

REMEMBER THIS. I will keep reminding you :-)"

Lecture Schedule

The list below represents the sequence of lectures as we see they will be given. As time goes on, we may change the order. Also as time goes on, we will see how they divide themselves up into dates.

If a topic has hot links, then the slides for the topic are available for downloading. If there are no hot links on a topic, the slides are not ready yet, and will be later, we hope, at least one day before the lecture.

The title itself is a hot link to a copy of its slides in Acrobat form (.pdf). These slides may not be exactly what we are showing on the screen during the lecture. The lecture may have material that we do not have the legal right to distribute multiple copies of. It may have also an exercise that we want to do alive in class with your help. We do not want you to be able to see such material until we have finished.

Underneath the header Additional Materials OR Deliverable Details, you will find some additional reading or viewing material.

                   
Date Day & Lecturer OR Topic & Main Slides Additional Materials
     
5 September Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Administration, Plans, and Requirements of the Course The Importance of Ignorance
10 September Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Requirements Engineering Reference Model: Domain Modeling  
12 September Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Requirements Engineering Reference Model: Domain Modeling  
17 September Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Classes: Concepts, Context, and Identification  
  
  First Draft Domain Model for whenisgood.net: Scan Bad Draft Domain Model for whenisgood.net
19 September Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Classes: Concepts, Context, and Identification More on Domain Modeling for Deliverable
  
  First Draft Domain Model for whenisgood.net: Scan Final Draft Domain Model for whenisgood.net
  
  Bad Draft Domain Model for whenisgood.net Domain Model for Electric Passenger Vehicle: Scan
  
  First Draft Domain Model with no borders: Photo of Blackboard Second Draft Domain Model with System Border Updated from First Draft: Photo Of Blackboard
  
  Third Draft Domain Model with Both Borders and some Trimming: Photo Of Blackboard Final Draft Domain Model with Both Borders and Trimmed: Photo of Blackboard
24 September Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Use Cases and Scenarios  
  
  WhenIsGood Use Cases Raw WhenIsGood Use Cases With Labels
26 September Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Use Cases and Scenarios Use Cases for Podium System, including alternatives and exceptions
  
  WhenIsGood Use Cases Raw WhenIsGood Use Cases With Labels
  
  Scenarios for PopulateEvent Scenarios for Update Event
  
  Scenarios for ShowResponseCalendar WhenIsGood Use Cases With Scenario Steps Made Use Cases
1 October Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Finding Exceptions and Variations to Use Cases
The Dangerous "All" in Specifications: See Slides 1--30.
Requirements Determination is Unstoppable: See Slides 1--48, 58--60.
3 October Tuesday NO LECTURE: Professor On Holiday!!!  
     
8 October Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Scope Determined (D) and Scope Determining (G) Requirements: A New Categorization of Functional Requirements Advice on Where to Find Exceptions
  
  The 90-10 or 80-20 percent phenomenon My Self-Administered Hair Cut During the Covid-19 Lockdown: Real-Life, Small-Scale Requirements Engineering
10 October Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  SRSs IEEE Standard for SRSs
  
  User's Manuals as Requirements Specifications  
15 October Tuesday NO LECTURE: Reading Week!!!  
     
17 October Thursday NO LECTURE: Reading Week!!!  
     
22 October Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  User's Manual Advice Example User's Manual for WD-pic
24 October Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  User Interface Specifications "Interface Quotas and Internet-Derived Value", Bob Colwell, IEEE Computer 37:12, pp. 10-12, 2004
  
  Exiting a textEdit Session Exiting an MS Word Session
29 October Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Software Cost Estimation Head Start or Bad Bet?
31 October Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  "Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants", by Grant Gross Requirements Engineering for a Synagogue's Kitchen
5 November Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Ambiguity in Requirements Specifications Some "only" Exercises for Class
  
  Google search for "I only eat" Google search for "I eat only"
7 November Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Ambiguity in Requirements Specifications All the sentences with "only" in the EVLA Array Operations Software Requirements.
  
  Google search for "All eat" Google search for "Each eats"
  
  Google search for "Both eat" The Dangerous "All" in Specifications: See Slides 30--34.
  
  'Requirements for Monitoring Inattention of the Responsible Human in an Autonomous Vehicle: The Recall and Precision Tradeoff' by Johnathan DiMatteo, Daniel M. Berry, Krzysztof Czarnecki  
12 November Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Nonfunctional or Quality Requirements  
14 November Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  'Requirements for Monitoring Inattention of the Responsible Human in an Autonomous Vehicle: The Recall and Precision Tradeoff' by Johnathan DiMatteo, Daniel M. Berry, Krzysztof Czarnecki RE for AI: What is an RS for an AI?
  
  Some AI Apps AI Validation TimeLine
  
  Evaluate Correctness of Translator Evaluate Correctness of Recognizer
19 November Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  State Machine Diagrams  
21 November Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Linear Temporal Logic  
  
  How to Evaluate the Course Prof  
26 November Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Linear Temporal Logic  
28 November Thursday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  Elicitation  
3 December Tuesday Lecture: Daniel Berry  
  The Requirements Iceberg  

This page is at http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~se463/index.shtml


CS445/CS645/ECE451: Software Requirements and Specification
Last modification: Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 09:30:19 EST