https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/index.html Calendar Description 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. Overall Goals CS445/CS645/ECE451 is about the problem of identifying what software to build, such that the end product is useful for stakeholders and users. The course is different from other computing courses in that it focuses on activities and technologies for being efficient and effective in determining what software to build, rather than on knowledge and techniques for how to build the software itself. The course emphasizes people-facing activities of determining requirements (e.g., eliciting needs from stakeholders, seeking user feedback, and negotiation) as well as technical activities, such as requirements analyses, strategies for prioritizing requirements, and notations for modelling and documenting requirements. Hugo en-us https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/help/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/help/index.html Sometimes we all “need a little help from [our] friends” (The Beatles on Spotify). If you’re having one of those times now, please reach out. Your instructor is not a trained counsellor or physician, but if you’re at the end of your rope, need help now, and don’t know where else to turn, reach out. Mental Health Supports On-campus Resources: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/topics/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/topics/index.html The course covers the four major aspects of software requirements engineering: elicitation, modelling, analysis (e.g., triage, conflict management, risk analysis), and documentation. The aspects are broken down into nine topics, each of which focuses on a particular requirements-related problem to be solved when developing a software system or on a particular technique for addressing a requirements-related problem. Listed below are the topics that are typically covered in every offering of this course. This term the order in which topics are covered will generally progress from (1) techniques employed when developing software at start-ups and tech companies to (2) techniques employed when developing enterprise software systems or when consulting (i.e., developing bespoke software for a client) to (3) techniques employed when developing safety-critial systems. One impact of this ordering of topics is that course concepts become increasingly difficult over the course of the term, where some of the later modelling languages are mathematical in nature. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/delivery/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/delivery/index.html In Winter 2026, CS445/CS645/ECE451 will be delivered as an in-person flipped course. There will be weekly prerecorded lectures. However, most of the learning and most of your time in the course will be spent on activities that are carried out during in-person team meetings. Lecture videos will be released on Fridays for the following week. You are expected to watch each week’s videos in advance of your team meeting that week. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/public_health/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/public_health/index.html Contingency Plans If COVID mutates badly or another public-health emergency emerges that precludes in-person courses, then all team meetings will be online synchronous meetings (e.g., via Teams) at the same time they would have occurred in-person. The course instructor and TAs will join your meetings and provide the same Q&A, advising, and feedback as we would if we were in-person. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/project/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/project/index.html The work in CS445/CS645/ECE451 centres on the course project, which is the scoping and specification of a software system, of your team’s choosing, that is hypothetically to be developed by another team. Your team will choose a real-world problem that you think can be addressed or mitigated by software. I encourage you to use this course project as an opportunity to think about how software can be used to improve people’s lives (e.g., improve mental health and happiness, reduce waste and share resources, combat climate change, promote equity and inclusion). If you are looking for ideas, consider something related to the UN sustainable development goals. Another source of ideas are projects from past terms (here and here), but your team needs to find its own problem to tackle. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/grading/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/grading/index.html The following grading scheme is based on points, not percentages. Each component of your final grade is worth up to the given number of points. Your final grade will be computed as the number of points earned divided by the number of points available. The points available depends on whether you are an undergrad or grad student and whether we are forced to have on-line exams. Teamwork (Individual) CS445 ECE451CS645 Ethics Training -- Team Contract and Health Surveys 4 Weekly Team Meeting Participation 8 Peer Evaluations 10 Buddy Team Feedback 3 Deliverables (Team) Weekly Deliverables 35 Final SRS Document 20 Quizzes/Exam (Individual) Quiz 1 5 Quiz 2 5 Quiz 3 5 Final Exam 25 CS645 only Grad Lecture (oral + written)--15 If COVID or another public-health emergency emerges that precludes in-person exams, then: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/lates/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/lates/index.html Due Dates Weekly Deliverables are due on Mondays at 8:59pm. The final Software Requirements Specification (SRS) for your course project is also due at 8:59pm ET on its due date. Any Weekly Deliverables or SRS deliverable that are submitted after their due date will accrue one Late Day for every 24 hours beyond their original due date. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/exams/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/exams/index.html See also Resources→Exams Quizzes There will be three quizzes conducted in the Tutorial time slot/room: Friday, Jan 30, 12:30 - 14:20, MC 2038 Friday, Feb 27, 12:30 - 14:20, MC 2038 Friday, Mar 20, 12:30 - 14:20, MC 2038 Final Exam Scheduling: The final exam for this course will be held in-person at a date and time still to be determined by the Registrar’s Office. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/platforms/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/platforms/index.html Microsoft Teams We will be using Microsoft Teams as our primary forum for course communications, including announcements, questions, and private team chat. Be sure to pay attention to the Announcements channel for announcements from course personnel. If you have a question, ask on Teams first. You can ask your question in the public Questions channel. The TAs and I will be checking the Questions channel several times a week. If you see a question that has not yet been answered and you know the answer, please “reply” and share your knowledge with your classmates. Your team will be provided with a private team channel, which the instructors and your project TA will also have access to. You can ask your question in your private team channel, especially if it relates to your team’s project. You can ask private questions to a specific TA or instructor by direct messaging them. You can also send an email to cs445@uwaterloo.ca. To book a 15-minute Teams meeting with the instructor or your project team’s TA ouside of your team’s normal Tuesday meetings, email us or DM us on Teams to set up a meeting time that works for everyone. While online chat tools like Teams provide a convenient way for students to reach TAs/instructors and fellow students, do not expect instanteous answers. Also, Teams does not lend itself to long messages. Keep your questions clear/concise and your comments professional. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/references/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/references/index.html There is no good single text for this course because the course does not focus on any single methodology or any single type of software system. Therefore, there is no required textbook for this course, but there are several references (which the lectures are drawn from) that are worth reading and having on your bookself. You can gain free access to online versions of all these references, in a way that you can annotate and highlight your own copy, via the university’s subscription to the O’Reilly Learning platform. Use this opportunity to take a look at these texts and see if any are worth buying. See the course’s Resources Web page for instructions on how to access these references. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/grad_lectures/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/grad_lectures/index.html Graduate students enrolled in CS645 are expected to do a small library-research project on top of the normal course work. The deliverables of this project are: A 12-15 minute video lecture to be presented to the class (comprising a pre-recorded video and slides) A 15-20 page written summary of your lecture topic, complete with references Your project can be on any topic related to requirements engineering, or possibly a more general software engineering topic. Example topics include requirements notations not covered in class (e.g., Alloy, SCR, SysML), requirement-phase activities (e.g., conformance to privacy laws, security requirements, requirements for product lines, or traceability), or an interesting case study. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/diversity/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/diversity/index.html It is our intent that students from all diverse backgrounds and perspectives be well served by this course, and that students’ learning needs be addressed both in and out of class. We recognize the immense value of the diversity in identities, perspectives, and contributions that students bring, and the benefit it has on our educational environment. Your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let us know ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or for other students or student groups. In particular: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/ip/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/ip/index.html Students should be aware that this course contains the intellectual property of their instructor, past instructors, TA, and/or the University of Waterloo. Intellectual property includes items such as: Lecture content, spoken and written (and any audio/video recording thereof); Lecture handouts, presentations, and other materials prepared for the course (e.g., PowerPoint slides, Web pages); Questions or solution sets from various types of assessments (e.g., assignments, quizzes, tests, final exams); and Work protected by copyright (e.g., any work authored by the instructor or TA or used by the instructor or TA with permission of the copyright owner). You are allowed to download lecture videos and course materials for your own academic use, but you should not copy, share, disseminate, upload, or use them for any other purpose without the explicit permission of the instructor. For example, do not share this course’s materials with third-party online repositories. Doing so is a violation of intellectual property rights and laws and (depending on the use) may be an academic offence. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/code_sharing/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/code_sharing/index.html The Faculty of Mathematics has guidelines on making solutions available to others, even after you have completed the course. There are significant interactions with various cheating policies that may not be obvious at first glance. Please read them. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/policies/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/policies/index.html Academic Integrity In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Check out the Office of Academic Integrity for more information. Grievance A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 (Student Petitions and Grievances), Section 4. When in doubt please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/allinone/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/syllabus/allinone/index.html This page contains all previous pages of the syllabus on a single page to make printing/pdfing easy. University Policies Academic Integrity In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Check out the Office of Academic Integrity for more information.