A taxonomy for the early stages of the software development life cycle

Abstract Most researchers in the software engineering community use the term “requirements” to describe the initial stage of software development, and they define requirements to be a process of describing what, not how. However, the range of tools and techniques that are currently sold as requirements tools and techniques extends from aids for analysts asking potential customers appropriate questions about an existent problem to aids for defining algorithms for software modules. This paper presents a taxonomy of the early stages of the software development life cycle to enable prospective tool and technique users to understand what they are buying and to enable future toolsmiths and technique developers to uniquely categorize and characterize their product in comparison with others.

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