Abstract

Requirements are the building blocks of IS products. “If you don’t get the requirements right, it doesn’t matter how well you do anything else” (Wiegers, 2004). However, generically, IS requirements are complex. They have multiple attributes. To extract business information relevant to building a product, classifying IS requirements into functional and non-functional categories is not enough. Requirement gatherers and analysts should be conversant with the multifaceted nature of IS requirements and their attributes. Yet, currently, the MIS and Computer Science programs do not impart this knowledge to their students. To fill the gap, this paper describes the concepts which would be useful to include as a module in a Requirements Engineering/ Management course. In addition, the article provides an illustrative example of how these concepts can be taught to give students a flavor of the real world.

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Teaching the Fundamental Attributes of IS Requirements

Requirements are the building blocks of IS products. “If you don’t get the requirements right, it doesn’t matter how well you do anything else” (Wiegers, 2004). However, generically, IS requirements are complex. They have multiple attributes. To extract business information relevant to building a product, classifying IS requirements into functional and non-functional categories is not enough. Requirement gatherers and analysts should be conversant with the multifaceted nature of IS requirements and their attributes. Yet, currently, the MIS and Computer Science programs do not impart this knowledge to their students. To fill the gap, this paper describes the concepts which would be useful to include as a module in a Requirements Engineering/ Management course. In addition, the article provides an illustrative example of how these concepts can be taught to give students a flavor of the real world.