No matter how good your quality process is, you are introducing bugs. This article reviews the places where bugs are introduced in the software development process (from stakeholders to users), and reviews ways to address those bugs.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Software development / Testing
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Why You Should Test Your Requirements
We’ve written before about several characteristics of well written requirements, and one of those characteristics is testability. Ahamad has written an list of 10 tests of requirements, with an emphasis on assessing the testability of the requirements. The testability of the requirement determines if the resultant product can be tested […]
Business Analysis / Interface Design / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Usability / UX
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Global Actor Hierarchies and Personas
We use actor hierarchies to organize the different users of a system. Different people play different roles, and thus do different jobs. We use different actors to identify and organize those people. When deploying a system globally, we usually discover people that do the same jobs, but do them differently. […]
Business Analysis / Business Process Modeling / Process Flow / Product Management / Requirements
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Requirements for Enterprise Architecture: First Look
Traditional requirements happen after a multi-system architecture has been defined. But what about the requirements that feed into that architecture? The requirements that drive the enterprise architecture decisions in the first place? We haven’t talked about those before.
Business Analysis / Process Flow / Requirements / Requirements Models / UML Modeling
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How To Draw an Asynchronous Process
Documenting processes is something most business analysts have to do. The goal of documenting the process is to communicate requirements. By establishing a shared understanding of the process, you can establish the context for the requirements. Easy processes are easy to draw and understand. When documenting a more complex process, […]
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Avoid the Abilene Paradox
An excellent article by Jonathan Babcock raises a thought provoking idea. When gathering requirements, we can end up with requirements that no one actually wants, because everyone thought someone else wanted it. This is apparently known as the Abilene Paradox, a term coined by Jerry Harvey. We can apply our […]
Business Analysis / Communication / Consulting / Requirements / Writing
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Requirements Writing Style and Synonyms
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 […]
Business Analysis / Business Rules / Data management / Requirements / Requirements Models
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Glossary of Terms
Some books on how to write and manage requirements mention using a glossary. Most books on requirements don’t go into enough detail about either the importance of a glossary of terms, or the precise use of the glossary of terms. Or if they do, they under-emphasize the benefits of a […]
Business Analysis / Prioritization / Requirements
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Stakeholder Value-Delivery Matrix
Roger Burlton, of the Process Renewal Group, gave an excellent presentation Monday morning at the 10th annual International Business Rules Group: Developing a Business Process Architecture and Program of Change. A lot of good stuff about how to define, develop, and manage processes. One idea in his presentation was particularly […]