EC-14.1 Requirements and Constraints, Written Down
You can turn a vague request into requirements that can be tested, separate a requirement from a constraint and from a preference, identify who the stakeholders are, and recognise a requirement that is really a solution in disguise.
Before:EC-13. Laboratory Practice, in SequenceUnlocks:EC-15. Capstone, in Two StagesEC-17. Industry and Research Experience
Almost every failed student project failed here, before any building started, because nobody wrote down what the thing had to do. This topic is the cheapest intervention in the whole area: an afternoon of writing at the start regularly saves a term. It is also the entry point for the capstone, which is why it carries no prerequisite of its own.
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A requirement is testable or it is not a requirement
The system shall be fast is not testable. The system shall respond within two hundred milliseconds for ninety-nine of a hundred requests is. Writing the test alongside the requirement is what forces the difference.
NPTEL: Product Design and Innovation (IIT Guwahati) · CourseRequirements, constraints and preferences, separated
A requirement is what it must do, a constraint is a limit you cannot move such as cost or size, and a preference is what someone would like. Mixing the three is how a project acquires impossible goals.
NPTEL: Product Design and Innovation (IIT Guwahati) · CourseFinding out who the stakeholders actually are
The user, the person who pays, the person who maintains it and the person who has to certify it want different things. Discovering the fourth of these late is a common and expensive surprise.
NPTEL: Design Thinking, a Primer (IIT Madras) · CourseThe requirement that is a solution in disguise
It must use a particular sensor is usually a solution somebody has already chosen, not a requirement. Asking what that sensor is for recovers the real requirement and reopens the design.
NPTEL: Design Thinking, a Primer (IIT Madras) · CourseNon-functional requirements, which are where projects fail
Power, size, cost, temperature range, lifetime, safety and who can service it. These rarely appear in the original request and they decide whether the finished thing is usable.
NPTEL: Product Design and Innovation (IIT Guwahati) · CourseBaselining, and what happens when a requirement changes
Agreeing a set of requirements at a date and recording changes against it. Without a baseline nobody can say whether the project is late, because the target has moved without anyone noticing.
NPTEL: Project Management (IIT Kanpur) · Course
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