One of the ten big rules of writing a good MRD is writing requirements that do not specify design. How do we specify enough detail to be actionable without constraining the engineering team? How do we trust our developers to do the right thing? The Big Rule of Avoiding Design-Agnosticism […]
Slightly off-topic
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Process Trumps People – Innovation Articles
Innovation begins with people, but only if the process allows it. Process Trumps People. A quick break to read about innovation can be a great way to recharge the batteries. Here are a couple good articles to get the juices flowing:
Product Management / Requirements / Software requirements specification
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Writing Concise Requirements
One of the ten big rules of writing a good MRD is writing concise requirements. We have to minimize the amount we write to avoid information overload. We also need to make sure we write enough to get the message across. How do we strike the balance?
Interaction design / Product Management / Requirements / UX
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Writing Valuable Requirements
One of the ten big rules of writing a good MRD is writing valuable requirements. How do we determine what requirements are valuable? To whom are they valuable? When a requirement represents a continuum how much is enough? What is too fast, what is too scalable? To whom must the requirement be valuable?
Software development / Test Automation / Testing
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Test Smarter, Not Harder – A Detailed Article
A detailed (15-page) article by Scott Sehlhorst showing how to incorporate test automation for complex software has been published at developer.*. This article shows the math, benefits, and weaknesses of traditional approaches to automating functional tests. The article also proposes improvements to the process, rethinking the problem to provide innovative solutions. This post discusses the background for the article and provides an overview, as well as links to related content.
Administrivia
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Non-Functional Requirements ERA [now available]
PEBBAK* error! Through a complete oversight / ommission / coma, the Non-Functional Requirements Equal Rights Amendment article was accidentally marked as private shortly after it was published. I was wondering why so many 404s happened when people tried to read it. Well, its back now. Enjoy it, and comment. It […]
Lists / Product Management / Requirements / Software requirements specification / Writing
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Writing Good Requirements – The Big Ten Rules
Pragmatic Marketing has a training seminar called Requirements That Work. In support of that, they provide a list of 8 characteristics of good requirements. We change one and add two more to round it out to The Big Ten Rules. Combine this with Michael’s ten tips for writing MRDs, and we’ve got a good handle on how to create a great MRD.
Product Management / Requirements
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Product Differentiation vs. Product Improvement
Build a better mousetrap. That’s what they used to say. But that doesn’t differentiate our products. Everyone is doing better, we need to do different.
Process Improvement / Requirements / Software development / Testing
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Non-Functional Requirements Equal Rights Amendment
We know how to deal with functional requirements. We know they are important – we can walk the dependency chain from goals to use cases to functional requirements. But how do we get to the non-functional requirements? Leathej1 points out the elephant in the room – non-functional requirements don’t get enough attention when it comes to testing. Let’s look into it some more…