Requirements engineering for technical products: Integrating specification, validation and change management

In this book chapter, we discuss in detail the challenges that have to be faced by requirements engineering for technical products. We identified these challenges in interviews that we conducted at a German car manufacturer. The main part of this chapter presents a prescriptive requirements engineering process that faces all identified challenges. This process has been developed and evaluated during the last three years and is the major result of the QUASAR project funded by the German ministry for research. Throughout this chapter, we use an example (i.e., the development of a door control unit of a car) to illustrate the challenges and all aspects of our requirements engineering process. This example is part of a typical industrial specification for a car control unit.