Week 5

Software Requirement
Engineering (SWE – 205)

Software Engineering Department
Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology Week # 5
Content
 Identifying decision makers and rules
 Business analyst role and tasks
Identifying decision makers
• There can be hundreds of decisions to make
on software projects.
 Need to resolve some conflict, accept (or
reject) a proposed change, or approve a
set of requirements for a specific release.
• Decision makers must first make sure that

they completely understand the problem.
• Decision making is a central responsibility of

managers and leaders. It requires defining
the issue or the problem and identifying the
factors related to it.
Identifying decision makers
• Early in your project, determine who the requirements decision makers will be and
how they will make decisions
 There’s no single correct answer as to who should make key decisions.
• The decision-making group needs to identify its decision leader and to select a
decision rule, which describes how they will arrive at their decisions.
Decision rules
There are numerous decision rules to choose from, including the following:
The decision leader makes the choice, either with or without discussion with
others.
The group votes and the majority rules.
The group votes, but the result must be unanimous to approve the decision.
The group discusses and negotiates to reach a agreement. Everyone can live with
the decision and commits to supporting it.
The decision leader gives authority for making the decision to one individual.
Requirements baseline
• A requirements baseline is a set of requirements that has been reviewed and

agreed upon and serves as the basis for further development.
• A baseline includes a set of version tagged requirement issues.
• Requirement baselines enable you to keep track of changes made to your

project over time.
Scenario for using requirement baseline
• XYZ, a business analyst, presents a group of requirements to the stakeholders
to review. After the requirements are reviewed and approved, he creates a
baseline. Stakeholders can then sign off on the agreed upon release content.
• As work continues on development, managers and developers can check the

current version of requirements against the baseline for important
modifications, additions, and deletions.
• At sign off or the move to a new version/phase, a new baseline can be

created to capture the new state of the requirements.
The business analyst role
• The business analyst is the individual who has the primary responsibility to
elicit, analyze, document, and validate the needs of the project stakeholders.
• BA work with organizations to help them improve their processes and systems. They
conduct research and analysis in order to come up with solutions
to business problems and help to introduce these systems to businesses and their
clients.
• The analyst serves as the principal interpreter through which requirements
flow between the customer community and the software development team,
as shown in Figure
• The BA plays a central role in collecting and distributing product information,
whereas the project manager takes the lead in communicating project information.
• Business analyst is a project role, not necessarily a job title. Replacements for
business analyst include requirements analyst, systems analyst, requirements
engineer, requirements manager, application analyst, business systems analyst, IT
business analyst, and simply analyst. These job titles are used inconsistently from
organization to organization.
• Agile projects need business analysis skills, too. There will likely be a project role
such as a product owner who performs some of the traditional BA tasks.
The business analyst’s tasks
• The analyst must first understand the business objectives for the project
and then define user, functional, and quality requirements that allow
teams to estimate and plan the project and to design, build, and verify
the product.
• BA job description typically includes:
 Define business requirements
 Plan the requirements approach
 Identify project stakeholders and user classes
 Elicit requirements
The business analyst’s tasks
• BA job description typically includes:

Analyze requirements
 Document requirements
 Communicate requirements
 Lead requirements validation
 Facilitate requirements prioritization
 Manage requirements
Essential analyst skills
• Without acceptable preparation, direction, and experience, it is

unreasonable to ask people to act as analysts.
• Analysts need to know how to use a variety of elicitation techniques

and how to represent information in forms other than natural-language
text.
• An effective BA combines strong communication, facilitation, and

interpersonal skills with technical and business domain knowledge and
the right personality for the job.
Essential analyst skills
• Young (2004) provides a comprehensive table of skills that are appropriate for
junior-level, mid-level, and senior-level requirements analysts:
 Listening skills
 Interviewing and questioning skills
 Analytical skills
 Systems thinking skills
 Learning skills
 Facilitation, Leadership & Observational skills
 Communication, Organizational & Modeling skills
 Creativity
The analyst role on agile projects
• The business analyst roles must still be performed on projects using agile
development techniques, but the individual who performs them might not be
referred to as a BA.
• Some agile approaches have a key team member called the product owner.
• The person in that role might perform some of the traditional business
analysis activities, as well as providing the product vision, communicating
constraints, prioritizing the product backlog of remaining work, and making
the ultimate decisions about the product.

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Software Requirement

Engineering (SWE – 205)

• Decision makers must first make sure that

• Decision making is a central responsibility of

• A requirements baseline is a set of requirements that has been reviewed and

• A baseline includes a set of version tagged requirement issues.

• Requirement baselines enable you to keep track of changes made to your

• As work continues on development, managers and developers can check the

• At sign off or the move to a new version/phase, a new baseline can be

• BA job description typically includes:

• Without acceptable preparation, direction, and experience, it is

• Analysts need to know how to use a variety of elicitation techniques

• An effective BA combines strong communication, facilitation, and

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