Monthly Archives: July 2006

Communicating Intent With Implementers

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 17th, 2006

Giving a functional spec to developers and testers is not sufficient for creating great software. To a developer, a spec is only the what and not the why. And for a tester, the software requirements specification is neither. Use cases provide the why that explains the intent of the system for the implementation team.

Posted in Communication, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Software requirements specification, Use Cases | Tagged communicating intent, managing data, MRD, quality assurance, software development process, status report, status reporting, use cases | Leave a comment

Communicating Intent With Stakeholders

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 14th, 2006

We can build a prototype of what the stakeholders don’t want, and then get feedback and fix it. Or we can review use cases of what we intend to build, confirm that each stakeholder wants it, and build it right the first time.

Posted in Communication, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Use Cases | Tagged communicating intent, managing data, stakeholder communication, use cases | Leave a comment

Foundation Series: Data Dictionary Definition

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 13th, 2006

What is a data dictionary and how is it used when communicating and managing requirements?

Posted in Foundation series, Requirements, Requirements gathering, Software requirements specification | Tagged Business Analysis, data dictionary, Foundation series, managing data, managing requirements, object oriented analysis, ooa, UML Modeling | 2 Comments

Four Assumptions of the Apocalypse

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 12th, 2006

Business Analysts often start with four erroneous assumptions when eliciting requirements. 50% of errors in software projects are caused by requirements errors. These four faulty assumptions, presented by James A. Ward, can exacerbate the error-prone process of gathering requirements.

Posted in Product Management, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged Business Analysis, Business Process Modeling, eliciting requirements, extreme programming, incremental, managing data, requirements elicitation, Requirements gathering, xp | 3 Comments

Outside Reading: Top 10 Signs You Should Not Write Requirements

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 11th, 2006

Seilevel has a post that presents the top 10 signs that you should not pursue a career writing requirements, check it out. Thanks Joy for the great article!

Posted in Lists, Requirements, Writing | Tagged managing data, requirement discovery, Requirements gathering, writing requirements | Leave a comment

Verify Correct Requirements with Use Cases

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 10th, 2006

The next piece in the puzzle of how and why we apply use cases to product management. Verification of requirement correctness.

Product Managers Play Tug-of-War

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 7th, 2006

63% of product managers report to marketing and 24% report to development. 22% of requirements managers report to marketing with 55% in the development organization. These reporting structures can over-emphasize the needs of new users and super-users, while shortchanging the needs of the majority of users. Product managers will constantly be playing tug-of-war to get time to do the right thing.

Posted in Product Management | Tagged alan cooper, johanna rothman, managing data, Product Management, product managers, requirements management, requirements managers | 4 Comments

Requirement Completeness Validation with Use Cases

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 6th, 2006

In our article, The 8 Goals of Use Cases, the first goal is that our use cases must support requirement-completeness validation. In this article, we explore how to address this goal and how use cases can help. There are many pieces to this puzzle, and this article is one of them.

Posted in Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Use Cases | Tagged completeness validation, goal-driven use cases, managing data, requirement completeness validation, requirements validation, reviewing use cases, the use case of use cases, the use cases of use cases, use case analysis, use cases | Leave a comment

Make Your Meetings 60% More Effective

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 5th, 2006

While effective meetings may not be the key to success, ineffective meetings are inarguably one of the largest time wasters in corporations. Applying these tips before, during, and after meetings will make us much more effective.

Posted in Communication, Consulting, Project Management | Tagged effective meetings, managing data, meetings, more effective meetings, Prioritization, requirements validation, use cases | 8 Comments

Customer Independence Day

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 3rd, 2006

If This Be Treason, Make the Most Of IT! (Patrick Henry)

The customer is always right, except when he is wrong. When we have bad customers, we should fire them. Declare today as Customer Independence Day, where we declare our independence from bad customers.

Posted in Consulting, Lists, Slightly off-topic | Tagged fire the customer, fire your customer, firing customer, firing our customers, firing your customers, managing data | 2 Comments