Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right, 3/e, Video Enhanced Edition

Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right, 3/e, Video Enhanced Edition

by Suzanne Robertson, James Robertson
Released August 2012
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780132942850

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Book description

“If the purpose is to create one of the best books on requirements yet written, the authors have succeeded.” —Capers Jones

Software can solve almost any problem. The trick is knowing what the problem is. With about half of all software errors originating in the requirements activity, it is clear that a better understanding of the problem is needed.

Getting the requirements right is crucial if we are to build systems that best meet our needs. We know, beyond doubt, that the right requirements produce an end result that is as innovative and beneficial as it can be, and that system development is both effective and efficient.

Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right, Third Edition, sets out an industry-proven process for gathering and verifying requirements, regardless of whether you work in a traditional or agile development environment. In this sweeping update of the bestselling guide, the authors show how to discover precisely what the customer wants and needs, in the most efficient manner possible.

Features include

  • The Volere requirements process for discovering requirements, for use with both traditional and iterative environments

  • A specification template that can be used as the basis for your own requirements specifications

  • Formality guides that help you funnel your efforts into only the requirements work needed for your particular development environment and project

  • How to make requirements testable using fit criteria

  • Checklists to help identify stakeholders, users, non-functional requirements, and more

  • Methods for reusing requirements and requirements patterns

    • New features include

  • Strategy guides for different environments, including outsourcing

  • Strategies for gathering and implementing requirements for iterative releases

  • “Thinking above the line” to find the real problem

  • How to move from requirements to finding the right solution

  • The Brown Cow model for clearer viewpoints of the system

  • Using story cards as requirements

  • Using the Volere Knowledge Model to help record and communicate requirements

  • Fundamental truths about requirements and system development

    • Table of contents

    1. Title Page
    2. Copyright Page
    3. Inside Front Cover
      1. Requirements Strategy Maps
    4. Dedication Page
    5. Contents
    6. Preface to the Third Edition
    7. Foreword to the First Edition
    8. Acknowledgments
    9. 1. Some Fundamental Truths
      1. Truth 1
      2. Truth 2
      3. Truth 3
      4. Truth 4
      5. Truth 5
      6. Truth 6
      7. Truth 7
      8. Truth 8
      9. Truth 9
      10. Truth 10
      11. Truth 11
      12. What Are These Requirements Anyway?
      13. The Volere Requirements Process
    10. 2. The Requirements Process
      1. The Requirements Process in Context
      2. A Case Study
      3. Project Blastoff
      4. Trawling for Requirements
      5. Quick and Dirty Modeling
      6. Scenarios
      7. Writing the Requirements
      8. Quality Gateway
      9. Reusing Requirements
      10. Reviewing the Requirements
      11. Iterative and Incremental Processes
      12. Requirements Retrospective
      13. Evolution of Requirements
      14. The Template
      15. The Snow Card
      16. Your Own Requirements Process
      17. Formality Guide
      18. The Rest of This Book
    11. 3. Scoping the Business Problem
      1. Project Blastoff
      2. Formality Guide
      3. Setting the Scope
      4. IceBreaker
      5. Scope, Stakeholders, and Goals
      6. Stakeholders
      7. Other Stakeholders
      8. Finding the Stakeholders
      9. Goals: What Do You Want to Achieve?
      10. Constraints
      11. Naming Conventions and Definitions
      12. How Much Is This Going to Cost?
      13. Risks
      14. To Go or Not to Go
      15. Blastoff Meetings
      16. Summary
    12. 4. Business Use Cases
      1. Understanding the Work
      2. Formality Guide
      3. Use Cases and Their Scope
      4. The Scope of the Work
      5. Business Events
      6. Why Business Events and Business Use Cases Are a Good Idea
      7. Finding the Business Events
      8. Business Use Cases
      9. Business Use Cases and Product Use Cases
      10. Summary
    13. 5. Investigating the Work
      1. Trawling the Business
      2. Formality Guide
      3. Trawl for Knowledge
      4. The Business Analyst
      5. Trawling and Business Use Cases
      6. The Brown Cow Model
      7. The Current Way of Doing Things (How-Now)
      8. Apprenticing
      9. Business Use Case Workshops
      10. Interviewing the Stakeholders
      11. Looking for Reusable Requirements
      12. Quick and Dirty Process Modeling
      13. Prototypes and Sketches
      14. Mind Maps
      15. The Murder Book
      16. Video and Photographs
      17. Wikis, Blogs, Discussion Forums
      18. Document Archeology
      19. Family Therapy
      20. Choosing the Best Trawling Technique
      21. Finally . . .
    14. 6. Scenarios
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Scenarios
      3. The Essence of the Business
      4. Diagramming the Scenario
      5. Alternatives
      6. Exceptions
      7. What if? Scenarios
      8. Misuse Cases and Negative Scenarios
      9. Scenario Template
      10. Summary
    15. 7. Understanding the Real Problem
      1. Formality Guide
      2. The Brown Cow Model: Thinking Above the Line
      3. Solving the Right Problem
      4. Moving into the Future
      5. How to Be Innovative
      6. Systemic Thinking
      7. Value
      8. Personas
      9. Challenging Constraints
      10. Innovation Workshops
      11. Brainstorming
      12. Back to the Future
    16. 8. Starting the Solution
      1. Iterative Development
      2. Essential Business
      3. Determine the Extent of the Product
      4. Consider the Users
      5. Designing the User Experience
      6. Innovation
      7. Sketching the Interface
      8. The Real Origin of the Business Event
      9. Adjacent Systems and External Technology
      10. Cost, Benefit, and Risks
      11. Document Your Design Decisions
      12. Product Use Case Scenarios
      13. Putting It All Together
    17. 9. Strategies for Today’s Business Analyst
      1. Balancing Knowledge, Activities, and People
      2. Common Project Requirements Profiles
      3. How Much Knowledge Is Needed Before Each Breakout?
      4. External Strategy
      5. Iterative Strategy
      6. Sequential Strategy
      7. Your Own Strategy
      8. Sharpening Your Requirements Skills
      9. Summary
    18. 10. Functional Requirements
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Functional Requirements
      3. Uncovering the Functional Requirements
      4. Level of Detail or Granularity
      5. Description and Rationale
      6. Data, Your Secret Weapon
      7. Exceptions and Alternatives
      8. Conditional Requirements
      9. Avoiding Ambiguity
      10. Technological Requirements
      11. Grouping Requirements
      12. Alternatives to Functional Requirements
      13. Requirements for COTS
      14. Summary
    19. 11. Non-functional Requirements
      1. An Introduction to Non-functional Requirements
      2. Formality Guide
      3. Functional Versus Non-functional Requirements
      4. Use Cases and Non-functional Requirements
      5. The Non-functional Requirements Types
      6. Look and Feel Requirements: Type 10
      7. Usability and Humanity Requirements: Type 11
      8. Performance Requirements: Type 12
      9. Operational and Environmental Requirements: Type 13
      10. Maintainability and Support Requirements: Type 14
      11. Security Requirements: Type 15
      12. Cultural Requirements: Type 16
      13. Legal Requirements: Type 17
      14. Finding the Non-functional Requirements
      15. Don’t Write a Solution
      16. Summary
    20. 12. Fit Criteria and Rationale
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Why Does Fit Need a Criterion?
      3. The Rationale for the Rationale
      4. Deriving Fit Criteria
      5. Scale of Measurement
      6. Fit Criteria for Non-functional Requirements
      7. Fit Criteria for Functional Requirements
      8. Forms of Fit Criteria
      9. Use Cases and Fit Criteria
      10. Fit Criterion for Project Purpose
      11. Fit Criteria for Solution Constraints
      12. Summary
    21. 13. The Quality Gateway
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Requirements Quality
      3. Using the Quality Gateway
      4. Within Scope?
      5. Testing Completeness
      6. Testing the Fit Criterion
      7. Consistent Terminology
      8. Viable within Constraints?
      9. Requirement or Solution?
      10. Requirement Value
      11. Gold Plating
      12. Requirements Creep
      13. Implementing the Quality Gateway
      14. Summary
    22. 14. Requirements and Iterative Development
      1. The Need for Iterative Development
      2. An Iterative Requirements Process
      3. Business Value Analysis and Prioritization
      4. How to Write a Good User Story
      5. Iterative Requirements Roles
      6. Summary
    23. 15. Reusing Requirements
      1. What Is Reusing Requirements?
      2. Sources of Reusable Requirements
      3. Requirements Patterns
      4. A Business Event Pattern
      5. Forming Patterns by Abstracting
      6. Domain Analysis
      7. Summary
    24. 16. Communicating the Requirements
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Turning Potential Requirements into Written Requirements
      3. Knowledge Versus Specification
      4. The Volere Requirements Specification Template
      5. Discovering Atomic Requirements
      6. Attributes of Atomic Requirements
      7. Assembling the Specification
      8. Automated Requirements Tools
      9. Functional Requirements
      10. Non-functional Requirements
      11. Project Issues
      12. Summary
    25. 17. Requirements Completeness
      1. Formality Guide
      2. Reviewing the Specification
      3. Inspections
      4. Find Missing Requirements
      5. Have All Business Use Cases Been Discovered?
      6. Prioritizing the Requirements
      7. Conflicting Requirements
      8. Ambiguous Specifications
      9. Risk Assessment
      10. Measure the Required Cost
      11. Summary
    26. A. Volere Requirements Specification Template
      1. Contents
      2. Use of This Template
      3. Volere
      4. Requirements Types
      5. Testing Requirements
      6. Atomic Requirements Shell
      7. 1. The Purpose of the Project
      8. 2. The Stakeholders
      9. 3. Mandated Constraints
      10. 4. Naming Conventions and Terminology
      11. 5. Relevant Facts and Assumptions
      12. 6. The Scope of the Work
      13. 7. Business Data Model and Data Dictionary
      14. 8. The Scope of the Product
      15. 9. Functional and Data Requirements
      16. Non-functional Requirements
      17. 10. Look and Feel Requirements
      18. 11. Usability and Humanity Requirements
      19. 12. Performance Requirements
      20. 13. Operational and Environmental Requirements
      21. 14. Maintainability and Support Requirements
      22. 15. Security Requirements
      23. 16. Cultural Requirements
      24. 17. Legal Requirements
      25. Project Issues
      26. 18. Open Issues
      27. 19. Off-the-Shelf Solutions
      28. 20. New Problems
      29. 21. Tasks
      30. 22. Migration to the New Product
      31. 23. Risks
      32. 24. Costs
      33. 25. User Documentation and Training
      34. 26. Waiting Room
      35. 27. Ideas for Solutions
    27. B. Stakeholder Management Templates
      1. Stakeholder Map
      2. Stakeholder Template
    28. C. Function Point Counting: A Simplified Introduction
      1. Measuring the Work
      2. A Quick Primer on Counting Function Points
      3. Counting Function Points for Business Use Cases
      4. Counting the Stored Data
      5. Adjust for What You Don’t Know
      6. Now That I Have Counted Function Points, What’s Next?
    29. D. Volere Requirements Knowledge Model
      1. Definitions of Requirements Knowledge Classes and Associations
      2. Knowledge Model Annotated with Template Section Numbers
    30. Volere: Requirements Resources
    31. Bibliography
    32. Glossary
    33. Index
    34. Add Pages
    35. Inside Back Cover
      1. Project Drivers
      2. Functional Requirements
      3. Nonfunctional Requirements
      4. Project Issues

    Product information

    • Title: Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right, 3/e, Video Enhanced Edition
    • Author(s): Suzanne Robertson, James Robertson
    • Release date: August 2012
    • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
    • ISBN: 9780132942850