Requirements Engineering (for Dilbert)
Getting the purpose of a software system right is an evergreen theme in software engineering, and one of the fuzziest issues in this beautiful discipline. My friend Marco some times ago posted a great toon on the subject, with a brief and sharp commentary.
On sunday Dilbert posted an awesome strip on the tensions between engineers, customers and requirements:
- engineers want customers to express requirements clearly, possibly in a non-ambigous language (a set of differential equations wuold be perfect
). - customer wants engineers to guess what they are thinking their problem is.
This would seem a self-referencing non-terminating problem (sounds huge), but Dilbert has the perfect solution:
- As the designed software can do whatever the engineer designs it to do, the engineer should design a software to tell himself customer requirement.
Striking clear, not?
