Computer Science and Software Engineering 371

Software Requirements and Specification

Fall 2005

Homework #1

Due: Thursday, September 8 at midnight

Purpose: To gain experience reading requirements

1. Pick a job title related to software engineering which you could visualize yourself doing e.g. “software architect” or “systems analyst”.

2. Go online and find 10 position descriptions which relate to that job title and save the text for each of them. These are, in effect, the requirements for 10 jobs similar to the one you envisioned, according to 10 real stakeholders.

For example:  Go to http://www.monster.com, click on "search jobs", and search for "software engineer". Try to select ones from different companies, to get some variety.

3. Read the 10 position descriptions.  Write down at least 20 requirements that you believe look like common threads -- job qualifications which at least 2 of the 10 position descriptions mentioned.  These might be specific skills or background, or something more general like "ability to communicate".  Generalize the requirements if necessary, to get 20 of them which span multiple position descriptions.  For example, several of them may have asked for database background, although they differed about which database you were supposed to know.

4. Turn in a description for the job that you would like, using those 20 requirements to help formulate the description. It should be about one page long, single spaced, and readable in Word. Be sure to provide the URLs for the 10 position descriptions that you used to obtain the 20 requirements.

Please turn in your homework to the Homework #1 Drop Box in ANGEL.