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Domain Requirements in Practice

publish date: 2026/06/06 23:08:33.124008 UTC

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A librarian tells you: 'Obviously, all acquisitions are catalogued before they are added to the collection.' This statement illustrates which key challenge in requirements engineering?

Requirements reviews always catch missing domain requirements

Domain knowledge that is so familiar and obvious to domain experts that they assume it is common knowledge and don't think to explicitly state it as a requirement

Stakeholders always provide too much detail about functional requirements

Non-functional requirements are always harder to elicit than functional requirements

Correct Answer

Domain knowledge that is so familiar and obvious to domain experts that they assume it is common knowledge and don't think to explicitly state it as a requirement

Explanation

This illustrates a key challenge in requirements elicitation: domain knowledge so fundamental and obvious to domain experts that they don't think to mention it. 'Obviously, all acquisitions are catalogued before being shelved' is a domain requirement the librarian assumes everyone knows — but a requirements engineer without library domain knowledge may never think to ask about it.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 9th edition

Quizzes you can take where this question appears

Applied Requirements Engineering - Exercises