Bad Practices - Part II - Multiple Requirements

One of the things I have frequently mentioned in my previous posts is that requirements must be stated as simple atomic statements. I have shown how this simple practice enables one to readily verify that requirements have been met. Another positive consequence of atomic requirements is that overall modularity and traceability is enhanced.

Sometimes when trying to state a requirement, one actually states 2 or more within the same sentence. This happens because when people talk and write people tend to use conjunctions such as and, or, with, and also. Conjunctions indicate areas where multiple requirements exist. What one needs to do is ascertain whether eliciting the items separately allows someone to understand better.

For example, one can state the following,

• Articulation 1 - "The screw must be 4.5 centimeters long and must be able to withstand a temperature of 500 degrees Celsius."

Consider another articulation of the same information,

• Articulation 2a - "The screw must be 4.5 centimeters long."
• Articulation 2b - "The screw must be able to withstand a temperature of 500 degrees Celsius."

Let's look at how the articulation of requirements impacts the ease of verifying, tracing and overall modularity of the body of work. Consider two common situations:

• One aspect is met but the other aspect cannot be met. - The screw is 4.5 centimeters long but cannot withstand 500 degrees Celsius.
• One of the requirements has been changed. - The temperature the screw needs to withstand has been reduced to 400 degrees Celsius but the 4.5 centimeters length is still required.

For articulation 1:

• Part of the requirement is met and part is not. So is it 50% met or does it fail completely? How does one measure this?
• All requirements linked to this one must be examined to ascertain the impact of the change. If there are 5 children requirements, all five must be checked.

For articulation 2:

• The first requirement is met and the second fails.
• Only the requirements that are children of the second one must be examined to determine if changes are needed.

In both cases, articulation 2 yields better results. Now, the problems with having non-atomic requirements are clear.