One of my colleagues got into a debate with one of his colleagues about the differences between goals and requirements. His opponent fired the following salvo: “[That] is not a business requirement in any company of the world…” What you call your requirements is less important than how you communicate […]
Business Analysis / Business Rules / Requirements
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Business Architecture, Rules, and Requirements
We know to treat business rules and business requirements differently. One example – treat external government regulations as rules (because they are less subject to change than requirements). When you have multiple systems in an architecture, while “rules” makes sense for one system, “requirements” make sense for another. What 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 […]
Flashback
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Flashback: A Year Ago This Week on Tyner Blain [2006-10-20]
A look back at the best from a year ago.
Business Analysis / Business Process Modeling / Business Rules / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Global Processes and Business Rules
We’ve written before about the importance of separating rules from requirements, particularly in use cases. We wrote that with the goal in mind of reducing the costs of system maintenance. Low-level rules like decision, calculation and inference rules tend to change frequently – and independently of other requirements. So a […]
Business Analysis / Business Rules / Communication / Consulting / Requirements / Writing
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Why Separate Rules from Requirements
Separation of business rules from requirements is a good thing. Not because of semantic distinctions, but because it allows you to write better software, write it faster, and change it more easily. This article is a response to an excellent comment on our recent article about hidden business rules. Thanks […]
Business Analysis / Business Rules / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Business Rules Hidden in Use Cases
Business rules are not requirements. Yet they are often gathered at the same time as requirements, from the same sources, by the same business analysts. And unfortunately, often documented in the same artifacts. In this article we look at some of the ways that business rules are commonly hidden inside […]
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models
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Analysis Paralysis and Agile Development
How do you prevent analysis paralysis? That’s the question Barbara opens up for discussion on the Business Analyst Blog. The answer is somewhat simple. You stop as soon as you believe you have something that reasonably covers the goals (or use cases) that you are trying to address. When you […]
Agile / Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Software development / Software requirements specification / Use Cases
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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 […]