Each requirement you write represents a single market need, that you either satisfy or fail to satisfy. A well written requirement is independently deliverable and represents an incremental increase in the value of your software. That is the definition of an atomic requirement. Read on to see why atomic requirements […]
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? […]
Requirements Details – How Much is Enough?
What is the right level of detail for writing requirements? What about for writing specifications (functional, non-functional requirements, etc)? The answer is that there is no one answer. But there are guidelines, and reasons to write more detail, or less detail – for any given product or project, and any […]
Ignoring The Requirements, Watching The Discussion
Almost a month ago, we published an article titled Broken Requirements Ecosystem. That article built on a discussion thread at Seilevel. Since that time, the original thread has grown, and a new one has been spawned at the Catalyze site. In short, the question was asked on the Seilevel forum- […]
Broken Requirements Ecosystem
There’s an interesting thread on Seilevel’s requirements forum about why developers don’t read the specs and how to fix this problem. Sometimes the developers throw away the requirements. And that’s bad. But it is a symptom. Something is broken at a higher level.
APR: Mixing It Up With Design And Requirements
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.
Fifteen Ways to Shut Down
There are 15 ways for someone to shutdown a laptop running Windows Vista. This adds unwarranted complexity to our software. How can we avoid the same problem in our software?
Another Use For ‘Why?’
“Why?” The question is our inspiration and our muse. “Why?” is the justification for our requirements. The key to identifying “What?” and “When?”, which lead to “How?” and “How Much?” But there is another use for “Why?” – communication of intent (with stakeholders and implementers). Requirements documents are artifacts, but they are also dynamic documents. By documenting “Why?” a requirement is a requirement, we make it easier for future readers to understand.
Writing For The Purpose of Reading
The reason we write is so that someone can read it in the future. Duh. When we’re writing requirements documents, or documenting processes, how often do we stop and think about who will be reading our documents? We need to make sure our writing will be easy to read for our audience.