Mastering the Requirements Process - Hardcover

Robertson, Suzanne; Robertson, James

4.02

228 ratings by Goodreads

9780321419491: Mastering the Requirements Process

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0321419499 ISBN 13: 9780321419491

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006

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"If the purpose is to create one of the best books on requirements yet written, the authors have succeeded."

—Capers Jones

It is widely recognized that incorrect requirements account for up to 60 percent of errors in software products, and yet the majority of software development organizations do not have a formal requirements process. Many organizations appear willing to spend huge amounts on fixing and altering poorly specified software, but seem unwilling to invest a much smaller amount to get the requirements right in the first place.

Mastering the Requirements Process, Second Edition , sets out an industry-proven process for gathering and verifying requirements with an eye toward today's agile development environments. In this total update of the bestselling guide, the authors show how to discover precisely what the customer wants and needs while doing the minimum requirements work according to the project's level of agility.

Features include

The Volere requirements process—completely specified, and revised for compatibility with agile environments

A specification template that can be used as the basis for your own requirements specifications

New agility ratings that help you funnel your efforts into only the requirements work needed for your particular development environment and project

How to make requirements testable using fit criteria

Iterative requirements gathering leading to faster delivery to the client

Checklists to help identify stakeholders, users, nonfunctional requirements, and more

Details on gathering and implementing requirements for iterative releases

An expanded project sociology section for help with identifying and communicating with stakeholders

Strategies for exploiting use cases to determine the best product to build

Methods for reusing requirements and requirements patterns

Examples showing how the techniques and templates are applied in real-world situations

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Review:

Written in an engaging style and relevant for any software analyst or designer, Mastering the Requirements Process provides a powerful and useful guide to defining more complete software requirements that lead to better software overall. It's also filled with innovative advice.

The heart of this book is the authors' Volere Requirements Process Model, a step-by-step guide to gathering your requisites. Throughout this book, the authors use this process to explicate a single case study--a system for a municipality that will optimize the de-icing of roadways during snowy weather. Along the way, the book provides a solid guide to identifying and refining requirements, both functional and nonfunctional (such as performance and ease of use).

There are many excellent ideas in the book, including the notion of fitness for your requirements, which can be later used to track whether the software is successful. The book also wisely separates technology from requirements so that analysts can concentrate on understanding and modeling business problems instead of moving right away to the nuts and bolts of implementation. Even if you don't adopt the Volere model in toto, you can benefit from the concepts of "trawling" (a metaphor for the requirements-gathering process), quality gateways (in which tentative requirements are evaluated for inclusion in a project), and the wise use of patterns to help simplify the process.

Anchored by numerous examples (including many samples of successful requirements), the book provides an appealing mix of new ideas along with a remarkably clear presentation. In short, Mastering the Requirements Process provides useful advice that can make the project specification building phase of the software process easier and more robust. It provides the first steps for improving overall software quality for your organization. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Volere Requirements Process Model; project blastoff; determining requirements; user and stakeholders; project constraints; requirements constraints; use cases; business events; adjacent systems; innovation; trawling for requirements: apprenticing, interviews, and videotape; functional and nonfunctional requirements; fit criteria; quality gateways; traceability; prototyping and scenarios; low and high fidelity prototypes; patterns and requirements reuse; improving the requirements gathering process.

From the Back Cover:

Shelf category: Software Engineering Mastering the Requirements ProcessSuzanne Robertson & James Robertson Delivering the software that your customer really wants. "Mastering the Requirements Process and the Volere specification template are real breakthroughs. They introduce the beginnings of science to a domain which had, up till now, been ruled by craft." Tom DeMarcoIt is widely recognized that incorrect requirements account for up to 60% of errors in software products, and yet the majority of software development organizations do not have a formal requirements process. Many organizations appear willing to spend huge amounts on fixing and altering badly-specified software, but seem unwilling to invest a much smaller amount to get the requirements right in the first place. This is a book for those who want to get the right requirements. Mastering the Requirements Process sets out an industry-tested process for gathering and verifying requirements. It provides the techniques and insights for discovering precisely what the customer wants and needs. "Mastering the Requirements Process shows, step by step, template by template, example by example, one well-tested way to assemble a complete, comprehensive requirements process." Gerald WeinbergThe specification template in this book provides the basis for your own requirements specifications. It guides you to the correct specification content as each part of the process reveals different aspects of the products functionality and properties. This book shows you how to make the requirement measurable and testable. By providing a measurement – a fit criterion – for each requirement, the requirements analyst can describe precisely what the customer wants, the designer can construct a product that exactly matches the requirement, and the tester can determine whether or not the final solution satisfies the requirement."The Robertsons" concept of fit criteria is – all by itself – worth the investment of your time to read the whole book. Fit criteria and the allied discipline of quality gateways enable you to build requirement sets that are measurable, provably correct and testibly complete." Tom DeMarcoFeatures:� The Volere requirements process – completely specified with a rigorous and detailed model. � A specification template that can be used as the basis for your own requirements specifications. � The requirements shell used for bringing rigor, tracability and completeness to requirements. � Checklists to help identify stakeholders, users, non-functional requirements and more. � Trawling techniques for eliciting requirements. � How to exploit use cases to determine the best product to build. � Reusing requirements and requirements patterns. � Examples showing how the techniques and templates are applied in real-world situations. � Accessible style, fully cross-referenced, numerous diagrams.The Authors:Suzanne Robertson is a leading figure in the world of systems analysis and requirements modeling. She is the roving ambassador for the British Computer Society"s Reuse Group and is on organizing committees for the International Conference on Software Reuse and Object Technology. James Robertson brings the experience of working and consulting on requirements with several hundred companies to this book. When his busy seminar schedule permits, James advises companies on how to adapt to a world where requirements are paramount. Suzanne and James are principals of the Atlantic Systems Guild, an international think-tank producing numerous books and seminars that are among the most successful in the software industry.Visit Addison Wesley Longman on the World Wide Web at:http://www.awl-he.com/computing/http://www.com/cseng/BarcodeBack of Jacket

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