Problem Identification and Decomposition within the Requirements Generation Process

Only recently has the real importance of the requirements generation process and its requisite activities been recognized. That importance is underscored by the evolving partitions and refinements of the once all-encompassing (and somewhat miss-named) Requirements Analysis phase of the software development lifecycle. Continuing along that evolutionary line, we propose an additional refinement to the requirements generation model that focuses on problem identification and its decomposition into an associated set of user needs that drive the requirements generation process. Problem identification stresses the importance of recognizing and identifying the difference between a perceived state of the system and the desired one. We mention pre- and post-conditions that help identify and bound the problem and then present some methods and techniques that assist in refining that boundary and also in recognizing essential characteristics of the problem. We continue by presenting a process by which the identified problem and its characteristics are decomposed and translated into a set of user needs that provide the basis for the solution description, i.e, the set of requirements. Finally, to place problem identification and decomposition in perspective, we present them within the framework of the Requirements Generation Model.