Barry Boehm, inventor of the spiral model of software development, may also be the originator of the CRACK acronym for the type of users we want on our projects. When defining (and executing on) projects, we don’t just want CRACK users, we want CRACK stakeholders. And we want them to […]
Agile / Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Software development / Use Cases
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Cockburn Affirms: Use Cases Rule for Agile!
We’ve been promoting use cases as the right way to approach agile requirements, and in a recent article, Alistair Cockburn stresses the importance of use cases. Over the last three years, he has found that teams that avoid use cases consistently run into the same three problems. We defer, of […]
Agile / Business Analysis / Product Management / Software development
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Specializing Generalists and the Politics of Agile
A successful agile team requires someone on the team to act as the voice of the customer, someone to lead the developers, someone to lead quality assurance, and someone to organize, coordinate, and assure execution. For an agile team to succeed in an enterprise ripe with political resistance to agile, […]
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models
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The NICE Way To Think About Requirements
Too much information about requirements or too little? Too much documentation or too little? Use the NICE framework to get it just right.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Software requirements specification
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SRS Plan of Attack
How do you approach starting a small requirements project as part of a large initiative within a massive enterprise? Do you boil the ocean? Your customer knows she needs “requirements” to give to her development team. She asks you – what will you deliver, and how long will it take? […]
Business Analysis / Interaction design / Prioritization / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / ROI / Software development / Use Cases / UX
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Use Case Management is a Tough Balancing Act
Learning how to write use cases can be tough, but it is simple compared to the balancing act of determining which use cases to write and how to manage the expectations of all the stakeholders that are involved. It can be a difficult balancing act to prioritize use cases to […]
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements gathering
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Requirements: Knowledge and Understanding
[photo by Henkster] Writing good requirements is more than just about following a set of rules. You can capture knowledge about your goals and your product with a set of well crafted requirements. But to truly write good requirements, you have to gain a level of understanding that surpasses knowledge. […]
Business Analysis / Product Management
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Enterprise Product Management – Broad and Deep
When we’re part of a team creating software for the enterprise – an internally focused, IT initiative, we usually don’t think about product managers. Business analysts, systems analysts, and architects (of all varieties) are all commonplace. But not product managers. Product managers bring a perspective and a strategic focus that […]
Business Analysis / Interface Design / Product Management / ROI / Usability / UX
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User Adoption ROI
You want your software to be used, not to sit on the shelf. You can’t achieve the ROI of your software if people don’t use it. And you can’t achieve the ROI of your software by forcing people to use it either. Some will fail to achieve the benefits, and […]