Category Archives: Requirements gathering

Articles, tips, and techniques of eliciting requirements. Business analysts and product managers both practice software requirements gathering. These articles provide tips on how to gather requirements and create conversations about requirements gathering.

Business Rules And Requirements – Early Thoughts

By Scott Sehlhorst | July 10th, 2007

We had a great interview with James Taylor a couple weeks ago, where we talked about his new book, Smart (Enough) Systems, co-authored with Neil Raden.

James is an expert on decision management systems. I spent the late 1990s working on “rules-centric” software systems that allowed us to isolate rules and manage them seperately from other software requirements.

Traditional structured requirements approaches focus on the gathering and management of software requirements, but they gloss over the gathering and management of business rules.

James and I are exploring the best ways to bring these two points of view together.

Read the rest of the article …

Posted in Business Analysis, Data management, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged business requirements, Business Rules, decision management, managing data, requirements management, rules, uml statecharts | 5 Comments

APR: Mixing It Up With Design And Requirements

By Scott Sehlhorst | April 25th, 2007

With a definition of the important use cases for our agile project, we can move to the logical next step – which is what exactly?

Prototyping.

Read the rest of the article …

Posted in Agile, Agile Project: Ratings, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Software development, Software requirements specification, UML Modeling, Use Cases | Tagged agile case study, agile project, agile requirements management, agile software development, Design, managing data, prototyping | 4 Comments

Agile Development of Use Cases

By Scott Sehlhorst | April 2nd, 2007

We proposed a strategy for developing use cases as part of an agile development methodology last week. In this article, we will look in more detail at that proposal, and also look at a specific way to apply agile techniques to the development of the use cases. What we propose is essentially incremental development of use cases, and starting what comes next as soon as you can.

Read the rest of the article …

Posted in Agile, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Software development, Use Cases | Tagged managing data | 2 Comments

How To Start The Use Case Process For Agile Software Development

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 28th, 2007

One of the goals of agile software development is to deliver value quickly and iteratively. One of the most effective ways to begin the software development process is with use cases. To deliver with agility, you start with the most valuable use case, bang it out, and then move on to the next most valuable use case. How do you know which use case is the most valuable if you haven’t defined all the use cases first?

Three Types of Requirements Gathering

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 26th, 2007

There are many different activities that are a form of requirements gathering. So many that it can be difficult to determine which approach to use in what circumstance. By classifying requirements gathering into three different types of activities we can simplify the choices.

Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged brainstorming, business requirements, interviewing, managing data, requirements business | 6 Comments

UML Statecharts and Documenting Business Rules

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 22nd, 2007

In yesterday’s article we compared use cases and UML statecharts as tools for discovering business rules. James Taylor asked a question about how we would document those rules, and then followed up my comment response with an article about business rules and RUP. In this article we move the conversation slightly forward – recognizing that we’re slowly entering the ocean of business process management.

Posted in Business Analysis, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Requirements management software, UML Modeling | Tagged business requirement, business requirements, business rule, Business Rules, managing data, statechart, statechart diagrams, statecharts, uml statechart, uml statecharts | 5 Comments

Use Case vs. UML Statechart – Business Rules

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 21st, 2007

What is the better requirements management model for capturing business rules? The use case, or the UML statechart? In this article, we explore how customer orders are submitted and processed, and contrast how use cases and statecharts expose and document business requirements and business rules.

Use Case vs. Process Flow – Failure Handling

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 19th, 2007

Should you use use cases or process flow diagrams to document business requirements? At some level, they both document the same thing, they just document it differently. The best requirements will come from doing both – but what if you are forced to choose one? What are the tradeoffs between use cases and process flows? In this article we look at the documentation of failure handling.

Posted in Business Analysis, Business Process Modeling, Product Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Use Cases | Tagged Business Process Modeling, failure handling, managing data, process modeling, requirements management, sample use cases, use case examples, use case extensions, use cases | 13 Comments

Ten Supercharged Active Listening Skills To Make You More Successful

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 15th, 2007

Active listening is about more than gaining understanding. Active listening is about giving. Giving assurance that you understand someone’s needs. Giving confidence that you will address those needs. Giving feedback and acknowledgement that someone’s input is valuable. If you haven’t tried active listening, you may think it is a passive, receptive activity. Active listening skills will help you guide your customers and your team to do the right thing, and enjoy the experience.

Posted in Communication, Consulting, Lists, Requirements, Requirements gathering | Tagged active listening, active listening skills, effective listening skills, eliciting requirements, gathering requirements, managing data, requirements elicitation, Requirements gathering | 16 Comments

How To Visualize Stakeholder Analysis

By Scott Sehlhorst | March 13th, 2007

The first step of gathering requirements is to identify who can give you the requirements. Business processes include communication between different people inside the organization. Communication also includes people outside the organization. When gathering requirements, it can be easy to overlook the people who don’t use the software directly. Those people may still be stakeholders. Read on to see how to approach stakeholder analysis.