Business Analysts often start with four erroneous assumptions when eliciting requirements. 50% of errors in software projects are caused by requirements errors. These four faulty assumptions, presented by James A. Ward, can exacerbate the error-prone process of gathering requirements.
Outside Reading: Top 10 Signs You Should Not Write Requirements
Seilevel has a post that presents the top 10 signs that you should not pursue a career writing requirements, check it out. Thanks Joy for the great article!
Mozilla Director of Product Management Blog
The director of product management at Mozilla (makers of firefox) has started a blog, Sherman’s Blog, about how Mozilla approaches product management. From the first post on the Role of Product Management by (Mr.?) Sherman, I think this blog is likely to be one to watch.
Brainstorming Stirs the Pot
The Wall Street Journal apparently wrote a critique of brainstorming that questions its value. Bob Sutton (professor, author, etc) responds with an entertaining read. Prof. Sutton critiques the data analysis, the experiment execution, and the people involved. Seems the WSJ messed up on everything except the topic.
Intro to Requirements Gathering – St. Edward’s University
Welcome Dr. Franke’s students in Analysis, Modeling and Design MCIS6310! Thanks again for inviting me to present to your class on requirements gathering and requirements management. The presentation is available for download. You can get both the slides and the notes pages. The notes pages include additional content and links […]
The Agile Dragon
When Alan Cooper and Kent Beck debated the benefits of eXtreme Programming versus Interaction Design, they disagreed on a lot of things. One thing they agreed on is that Agile processes are designed to minimize the impact of changing requirements. Cooper believes that it makes more sense to minimize future change by understanding the requirements better up front. Beck believes that the requirements can not be understood by the team until something is delivered. Beck’s point is that the customer doesn’t understand the requirements until he has something in his hands. We’ve shown how this is both a strength and a weakness for Agile in the real world. In The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug was missing a scale on his belly, that made him vulnerable. Agile processes have a similar weak spot.
Challenging Requirements
The hardest long term challenge in eliciting requirements is improving our ability to do it. The hardest short term challenge in gathering requirements is getting all of them. We have a lot of techniques for gathering requirements, from interviewing to brainstorming to researching. How do we know we defined all of the requirements? Everyone who manages requirements knows the value of validating requirements. But validation leaves a blind spot as it looks backwards instead of forwards. We propose to do exactly the opposite.
Product Manager Role Definition
Michael has posted a great definition of the product manager role on his blog, Product Management and Product Marketing – A Definition. He covers a whole host of activities in six seperate areas. Some of the responsibilities, while not product management, are often the responsibility of the product manager. It’s a good real-world assessment of what product managers are often asked to do.
Software requirements for migration projects
A very common enterprise software project is the replacement of a legacy system – migrating functionality to a new system. This type of project usually has very different constraints than a “new application” project. We will look at the characteristics of migration projects to understand how we should approach them to assure success.