Abstract:
Today's world of engineering is moving faster with a goal of producing more, in less time. This leads to the question that every engineer faces, "do I take the time to develop requirements or jump straight into the design effort?" This question is easily answered when the engineer understands the role of requirements and how they fit into the product life cycle. Once the role of requirements is understood the next step is to understand what requirements are and how they work. The goal is to produce efficient, precise, and professional requirements that describe one system or a system of multiple systems for the project that is in work. When requirements are done right, the project will be completed on time, on budget, with a happy customer that is receiving the product they paid for. This paper is intended to train engineers to understand what requirements are and how to develop them. The paper will cover the basic reasoning for requirements, where requirements fit into the product design lifecycle, and rules for writing good requirements.