Topic outline

  • General

    Due to the corona virus, the course will be organised remotely. We will do our best in supporting the students of the course so that they can have a positive learning experience. If possible, we also try to organise contact sessions where the students can meet each other and the teaching personnel.


    The link to the FINAL DISCUSSIONS:  https://aalto.zoom.us/j/65799797415

    This course gives a broad understanding of requirements engineering (RE) and its role in system, product and digital service development. The roots of RE are from software engineering and software development. The purpose of RE is to ensure that the software system satisfies customer and user needs and the usage of the system provides value for customers and users.

    The key topics of the course are: 

      • the key RE activities and good RE practices
      • discovering user needs 
      • customer value creation and customer value evaluation 
      • linking RE with solution planning, roadmapping, and software development 
      • RE from the perspective of critical and creative thinking.

    After the course, you can explain what the key activities of requirements engineering mean in practice. You also learn to select good RE practices for development projects and you can relate RE to other processes such as solution planning, roadmapping, and customer value evaluation. You also learn to combine and apply different RE approaches when developing software-intensive products and digital services.

    CONTACT INFORMATION: If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact the responsible teacher of the course (Marjo Kauppinen) by email (first name.surname@aalto.fi).

    Course staff

    MKomakuva Marjo Kauppinen (Responsible teacher)
    Requirements engineering (RE) has been my passion for more than twenty years and it still is. I did my doctoral thesis on how organisations can improve their RE processes. Over the years, our research team have done collaboration with many companies and the results of this research work form the basis of this RE course. It has also been inspiring to follow how students have done their master’s thesis related to requirements engineering.
    Sari Kujala (Responsible teacher) 
    I am a senior university lecturer and I have been helping Marjo with this course since she started it. My research focus has been on identifying user needs, requirements elicitation, user-centered design, user experience, and eHealth. As I have a background in psychology, I will talk about creativity in addition to identifying hidden user needs and requirements elicitation.
    Nagadivya Nagadivya Balasubramaniam (Teaching assistant)
    Hi! I’m Divya. I am currently pursuing Ph.D., and my research area is AI ethics and requirements engineering. In the research study, I am exploring how to incorporate ethics in requirements engineering. I have a Master's degree specialising in Service Design Engineering from Aalto University. 
    Marie's photo Marie Monkam Ngatcheu (Teaching assistant)
    Having completed my Master’s thesis on Agile requirements engineering (RE) practices, I got to explore both traditional and Agile RE activities and best practices as well as customer-centric ways of identifying user needs in order to design products that are good for them. My aim is to support students as much as I can on their learning journey in this course. I hold a master’s degree in Service Design and Engineering from Aalto University.


    • Forum icon
      Announcements Forum
    • Forum icon
      Forming Teams Forum

      Form a team of 4 students. The goal is to form multi-disciplinary teams. The recommendation is that each team has

      • members with different kinds of backgrounds (studies, nationalities, work experience,..)
      • at least one Finnish speaking member
      • members who do not know each other in advance

      Please register your team by 15.2. at 8 pm by giving below as a discussion topic the following information:

      • The name of the team. Please invent a descriptive name for your team.
      • The names of the team members

      If you are looking for a team, please send an email to Marjo (first name.Kauppinen@aalto.fi) by Friday February 12.