To define the requirements, we work with whatever you have - marketing product definitions, existing prototypes, verbal descriptions - to create a prioritized set of testable software requirements.

One of our objectives in this task is to clearly separate requirements (what the device is supposed to do) from design (how the design is to do it.)  For example, the statement "the board incorporates a DS1501 with 128K NVRAM and an internal lithium energy source" is a description of a design element.  The statement "the device shall maintain a real-time clock with accuracy of +/- .05 seconds over the temperature range 0-70 Celsius" is a testable requirement.

One of the benefits of clearly differentiating requirements from design is that it become easier to write test procedures that focus on the features that the device must have in order to be useful.