Stakeholder Needs and Requirements (glossary)

(1a) Stakeholder needs include elicitation of needs, wants, desires, expectations and perceived constraints of identified stakeholders. Needs concentrate on system purpose and behavior, and are described in the context of the operational environment and conditions. (ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, 2023, Section 6.4.2)

(1b) Stakeholder requirements are transformed from the stakeholder needs to objectively adequate, structured and more formal statements. (ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148, 2018, Section 5.2.3)

(1c) Stakeholder requirements express the intended interaction the system will have with its operational environment and that are the reference against which each resulting operational capability is validated. The stakeholder requirements are defined considering the context of the system of interest with the interoperating systems and enabling systems. This also includes consideration of laws and regulations, environmental restrictions, and ethical values. (ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, 2023, Section 6.4.2)

Source

ISO/IEC/IEEE. 2023. Systems and Software Engineering -- System Life Cycle Processes. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organisation for Standardisation / International Electrotechnical Commissions / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2023.

ISO/IEC/IEEE. 2018. Systems and software engineering — Life cycle processes — Requirements engineering. Geneva, Switzerland: International Organisation for Standardisation / International Electrotechnical Commissions / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148:2018.

Discussion

Both definitions are taken from the introduction to the "Stakeholder Requirements Definition Process" in ISO/IEC 15288; there is no formal definition of the term "stakeholder requirement" in the standard.

For a full discussion of the role and importance of stakeholder needs in systems engineering see the Stakeholder Needs Definition article.

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