This video showing the abuse of jargon (2 minutes) is absolutely hysterical, and should be watched for humor alone. However, it also drives the point home about the effects of using jargon when writing requirements. When we write a PRD or SRS if we use the jargon of one domain, […]
Writing Requirements Unambiguously
Writing requirements without ambiguity
This is one of the harder parts of writing good requirements. Marcus tells us to avoid it with a good example here. Jerry Aubin at Seilevel has written an outstanding post on the subject, The art and science of disambiguation. Jerry starts his post with a gripping example from Weinberg and Gause:
Writing Functional Requirements to Support Use Cases
Background:
In our previous post, Sample use case examples, we created two informal use cases. The use cases were written to support product requirements defined as part of a project to reduce test suite maintenace costs. In this post, we will define functional requirements that support these use cases. This process is an example of using structured requirements, applied to a small real world project.
A requirements documentation mistake
Learn from an early mistake of mine At a previous employer, the first time I played the role of requirements manager (technically, program manager – with responsibility for the functional spec), I made a bunch of mistakes – this post is about one of them. The setup We were engaged […]
Requirements Document Proliferation
Too many companies don’t document their requirements.
Worse still, too many companies over-document their requirements.
Are people reading your requirements? A blogversation.
Tony just put up a post at Seilevel’s blog on making sure your spec is reviewed. Kent Newsome recently posted about starting cross-blog conversations here, possibly inspired by Amy Gahran’s post about it here. Tony’s post is a great topic to cross-blog about. Three easy steps to blogversation Post your […]
Readability and Requirements
Thanks to the download squad for pointing me at the Juicy Studio: Readability Test! You can go to Juicy Studio’s site, and calculate the reading level of any URL. You can also try the Readability Grader at Jellymetrics, for a modern take on it. Of the multiple analyses provided, the […]
Secret decoder ring
I’m having a little trouble reading the spec – I left my secret decoder ring at home! Ever hear that before? A set of requirements that makes perfect sense to one team member can be completely unintelligible to others. Requirements written in business-speak, or full of accounting jargon may be […]
Improve your writing with graphics!
I attended training on making compelling presentations last year – and one thing that was stressed was the use of imagery to drive points home. Although there have been images in my posts to date, they have been utilitarian – not sources of imagery. I need to do better with […]