Pictures and Ideas for Powerful Whitepapers

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Pictures can convey messages much more powerfully than words. In a recent discussion about writing whitepapers, I suggested combining the idea-creation advice from Made To Stick with the image-creation advice from Back of The Napkin. Check out this article to see some concrete examples.

Effective Status Reports

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An effective status report is one that Instantly conveys the state of the project. Creates a minimum of overhead for the project team. Gets you help when you need it, and latitude when you don’t. Is fun / energizing to the author and the readers. An effective status report is […]

Get an Edge With Visual Communication

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Having trouble working through complex concepts? Struggling to get a “simple” message across? As human beings, we are all pre-wired to absorb visual communication. You should take advantage of that to give yourself an edge when it comes to communicating.

Defining Problems With Cause And Effect Diagrams

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The Cause and Effect diagram is also known as a fish bone diagram, because it resembles the skeleton of a fish. Using a cause and effect diagram can be the most effective way to define the problems that you intend to solve with your product. Get your stakeholders engaged in […]

Requirements Writing Style and Synonyms

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A rose by any other name… When we’re learning how to write in high school and college, we’re taught that synonyms make our writing more exciting. In fact, not using synonyms can make our prose clumsy and awkward. When it comes to requirements, the last thing you want to do […]

Why Separate Rules from Requirements

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Separation of business rules from requirements is a good thing. Not because of semantic distinctions, but because it allows you to write better software, write it faster, and change it more easily. This article is a response to an excellent comment on our recent article about hidden business rules. Thanks […]

Writing Stylish Requirements

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You knew it would happen eventually, the big ten rules of writing requirements has become the big twelve rules. Maybe scope creep isn’t such a bad thing after all. Writing style plays an important role in writing requirements too.

Logical Requirements

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We talk about characteristics of good requirements, including completeness, correctness, and ambiguity. But how do we assure that our requirements are complete, correct, and unambiguous? Simple, Captain, with logic.