A software requirement is a capability that somebody needs or wants. It can be a component of an entire new application, a new feature for an existing application (an enhancement), or a request to correct a current shortcoming.

IEEE defines a requirements as: (a) a condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective; (b) a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed document; (c) a document representation of condition or capability as in definition (a) or (b).

The requirements engineering activity is the most crucial and most important in the software development life cycle.

According to Davis in 1993 requirements engineering is “The systematic use of proven principles, techniques, tools and languages for the cost effective analysis documentation and ongoing evolution of user needs and the specification of the external behavior of the system in order to satisfy these needs.”

According to loucopoulos in 1995 “Requirement Engineering can be defined as the systematic process of documenting requirements through an interactive and co-operative process of analyzing the problem, documenting the resulting observations in a verify of representation format, and checking the accuracy of the understanding gain.”

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