What’s Special about Requirements Engineering for Quantum-Classical

Quantum computing will impact all software development life cycle phases to a greater or lesser extent. With support from current literature, we discuss its potential impact on requirements engineering. We identified four main trends. A feasibility study focusing on quantum aspects is required before or after requirements analysis. The early analysis of the availability and the choice of hardware plays a bigger role than in developing classical software. Requirements are split into the functional, non-functional, classical, and quantum dimensions. The potential speedup of a quantum solution should be estimated and considered up-front.