Requirements engineering is a discipline that is used throughout industry and appears in all industry standards, including military, aerospace, oil & gas systems, automotive, nuclear, electrical systems, etc.

Multidisciplinary requirements engineering (MDRE) is a recognition that requirements engineering is a multidisciplinary endeavor due to the widely varied nature of the requirement types needed to adequately describe and lay out a complete set of system requirements for today’s complex systems.

MDRE comprises a multitude of disciplines. All industries have horror stories about projects that failed due to improper or a lack of requirements management. Of all the phases of systems and software development life cycle, requirements management is arguably the most crucial.

Introduction to Multidisciplinary Requirements Engineering

The primary objective of MDRE (Model-Driven Requirements Engineering) requirements analysis processes is to establish an initial set of requirements while ensuring clarity, completeness, absence of ambiguity, and absence of contradictions within the requirements set. Subsequently, this set of requirements definitions and specifications serves as the foundation for the development of system models, which are utilized at a strategic level to validate that the articulated requirements align with the customer’s needs.

Illustrated in the forthcoming figure, the information flow delineates the overarching process of requirements analysis. This process is indispensable for assessing the overall quality of requirements and addressing any discrepancies (such as contradictory requirements) prior to commencing the design phase. System modeling plays a pivotal role in capturing the requirements in various formats, facilitating their presentation across different organizational tiers within the development entity and the client organization.

Importantly, all requirements that are allocated or derived must be traced back to a specific customer requirements document. This traceability mechanism is crucial in ensuring that the resultant system effectively fulfills the original objectives and requirements set forth by the customer.