Thus requirements engineering has a heavy influence on the entire development project and therefore on the quality of the results, yet it is often neglected.

Elicitation

Eliciting requirements is the art of compiling a comprehensive – thus taking all stakeholders into account – set of requirements using special techniques such as interviews, questionnaires, apprenticing or system archaeology.

Phrasing

Phrasing requirements is the art of describing a requirement in such a way that it is unambiguous, testable and understandable. To do this, the analyst has a toolset which includes, among others, natural or semiformal languages.

Validation

Validating requirements is the art of modifying all the collected and phrased requirements in such a fashion that all stakeholders can agree on them. In order to facilitate this, appraisal, weighting and consolidation techniques are employed.

The SOPHIST Rulebook

The SOPHISTs have, after years of research, laid the foundation for requirements engineering in Germany in the form of the “SOPHIST Rulebook”. For more than eight years now, we’ve been using the Rulebook in small, medium and large, internationally distributed projects with remarkable success.

Services Offered

An abridged survey of the services the SOPHISTs can offer:

• Definition of your in-house requirements engineering strategy
• Elicitation of natural language requirements
• Phrasing of acceptance criteria
• Coaching during the elicitation and phrasing phases
• Transfer of requirements between specialized departments and the IT department
• Review of specifications (tendering, document management)
• Layout and management of specifications
• Instating methodical approaches to requirements analysis
• Holding interviews and specification reviews
• Security concepts during requirements management
• Planning and preparation for acceptance tests