Archive of Requirements Articles

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
March 11th, 2010

Business Goals and Requirements

Inventory in a warehouse

One of my colleagues got into a debate with one of his colleagues about the differences between goals and requirements.  His opponent fired the following salvo: “[That] is not a business requirement in any company of the world…”

What you call your requirements is less important than how you communicate them.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
March 1st, 2010

Measuring Great Design – Mad Libs Input Form

image of mad libs pads

I came across a really interesting article LukeW.com, showing how making changes to the way an input form on a website increased interaction by 25 to 40%. The changes reflect the value of thinking outside-in, investing in user experience, and performance measurement.

Bonus: the idea is cool.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
February 23rd, 2010

Complete Requirements

big ten rules of writing requirements logo #5

You give your requirements to the engineering team, and they look complete.  The team builds your product, you launch it and the market soundly rejects it.  Why?  Because your requirements weren’t complete – they didn’t actually solve the problem that needed to be solved.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
January 5th, 2010

Most Engaging Articles of 2009

Engagement – that’s what this whole product management blogging thing is about.  Check out what Tyner Blain readers found to be the most engaging articles in 2009.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
November 30th, 2009

Attainable Requirements

Unless you live in a world filled with unicorns and rainbows, writing realistic requirements is critical.  When you set unattainable goals, the best result you can hope for is a frustrated engineering team.  Write requirements that are attainable, and your team will surprise you with what they can achieve.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
November 3rd, 2009

Design-Free Requirements

Design-Free requirements are important for two reasons, and hard for two other reasons.

Design-free requirements are hard because you “know what you want” when you should be documenting “why you want it.”  Writing design-free requirements can be hard when you don’t trust your development team to “do the right thing” even though it is not your job to design the solution.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
September 28th, 2009

Kano Analysis for Product Managers

Kano Analysis, while initially created to understand customer satisfaction with features, can be used by product managers to better understand customer problems.  I gave a presentation last week for the Product Management View webinar series on Kano Analysis for product managers.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
August 3rd, 2009

Concise Requirements

Concise requirements give your team a useful, easy to read and easy to change understanding of what must be done.  Great requirements exist to do three things:

  1. Identify the problems that need to be solved.
  2. Explain why those problems are worth solving.
  3. Define when those problems are solved.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
July 29th, 2009

Valuable Requirements

Writing valuable requirements is important.  It doesn’t matter how well your teams execute if they are off building the wrong products / capabilities / features.  The right products and capabilities are the ones that have relevant value.

  • Valuable requirements solve problems in your market.
  • Valuable requirements support your business strategy.
  • Valuable requirements solve problems for your users.
  • Valuable requirements meet your buyers’ criteria.
  • Valuable requirements don’t over-solve the problems.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Just Plain BadLameAverageGoodGreat (3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
July 6th, 2009

Writing Complete User Stories

User stories can make requirements management a lot easier.  They shift some of the communication from up-front documentation to ongoing dialog.  That’s the main reason they work so well for agile teams.  And agile teams focus on “what’s next?” instead of an ever-changing “what’s everything?”   The problem is, when those conversations are working well, it is easy to forget to make sure that what you’ve done is actually enough.  Add a small dose of traceability, and you can easily validate the completeness of your user stories.

Read the rest of the article…

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Loaded Web - Global Blog & Business Directory