Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs

2. Workshop Deliverables: Mining Coal, Extracting Diamonds

“Example is the best precept.”—Aesop

When you examine a precious gem such as a diamond, you see different things depending on how light hits it, the angle of your view, and your distance from it. When you rotate the gem, you see new things. Each time you look, you might discover new wonders, each one different from the others yet equally valid. Even a slight twist of the gem gives you a richer appreciation of it.

You should treat your user requirements in a similar manner, seeking to examine them in a way that enriches your understanding. A good way to do that is by using multiple requirements models.

Requirements models offer a variety of ways to represent user requirements; these models ...