There are full courses, papers and entire books on the subject.
It is indeed important to get requirements right (either from the customer or to be able to gather them properly from the customer).
Here's an interesting (old) paper on the subject:
http://homepages.laas.fr/kader/Hooks.pdf
Quoting:
"Abstract. The primary reason that people write poor requirements is that they have had
no training or experience in writing good requirements. This paper will address what
makes a good requirement. It will cover some of the most common problems that are
encountered in writing requirements and then describe how to avoid them. It also
includes examples of problem requirements and how to correct them.
(...)
Published in the Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of the NCOSE - Volume 2, 1993. Prepared by the Requirements Working Group of the International Council on Systems Engineering, for information purposes only. Not an official position of INCOSE."
