Improving the System Software Requirements Development Process

One of the most significant challenges currently facing the system engineering profession is devising procedures for improving the system software requirements development process. While many practitioners promote a variety of automated tools and mechanistic templates as the means to improved productivity, experience suggests the highest leverage lies in harnessing the cognitive processes required to produce a stable set of well defined system software requirements. System complexity and schedule constraints necessitate the use of teams of specialists working together to produce the desired software requirements database. System engineering's primary responsibilities are to foster team acceptance of a shared vision through the identification of intermediate and final products supporting the software requirements development process. This paper describes a framework for accomplishing the above, illustrates key points with actual examples, and identifies three approaches for improving management understanding of the requirements and software development processes.