CSE 403 - Assignment 1 - System Requirements

You will be assigned to groups of three people. The assignment will be given out in two parts. In the first part you will interview a "domain expert" to elicit information about a text-editor or word-processing system which will aid in the development of a requirements document. In the second part you will produce a requirements document based on the interview(s).

Requirements Acquisition Interview

You will be assigned to groups of three people each. Two people from each group will interview one person from another group to elicit information which will go into a requirements specification for a word processor or text editor. The next assignment will be to write a requirements specification, so you should be as thorough as you can.

Although the interviewer/interviewee roles will be separate, everyone should come up with questions and spend some time thinking about how they would answer them, since you won't know who will be the interviewer or the interviewee until class.

What to hand in: Part of the requirements document will be a list of the questions you planned, a paraphrase of the answers and comments you have on the interview process.

Requirements Document

After the lectures on requirements in class, the second part of this assignment will be handed out. This will be to write a System Requirements document.

Due date: 4/15/96

Although the interview writeup and requirements document will not be due for another week or so, we urge you to write up your interview notes as soon as possible, otherwise it will be easy to forget what transpired. We also urge you to start working on the requirements document as soon as possible since you are likely to discover that the original interview left many questions unanswered and you may want to schedule follow-up interviews.


Please send any questions about the assignment to
leveson@cs.washington.edu or carlson@cs.washington.edu