Synopsis
Most books about specifications still assume that requirements can be known up front and won’t change much during your project. In today’s “real world,” however, you must specify and build software in the face of high and continuing uncertainty. Scrum and other agile methods have evolved to reflect this reality. Now, there’s a complete guide to specifying software in agile environments when prerequisites are unclear, requirements are difficult to grasp, and anything about your project could change.
Long-time agile coach and enterprise architect Mario Cardinal shows how to create executable specifications and use them to test software behavior against requirements. Cardinal shows how to trawl requirements incrementally, step-by-step, using a vision-centric and emergent iterative practice that is designed for agility. Writing for analysts, architects, developers, and managers, Cardinal makes a strong case for the iterative discovery of requirements. Then, he moves from theory to practice, fully explaining the technical mechanisms and empirical techniques you need to gain full value from executable specifications.
You’ll learn to connect specifications with software under construction, link requirements to architecture, and automate requirements verification within the Scrum framework. Above all, Cardinal will help you solve the paramount challenge of software development: not only to solve the problem right, but also to solve the right problem.
You will learn how to
• Establish more effective agile roles for analysts and architects
• Integrate and simplify the best techniques from FIT, ATDD, and BDD
• Identify “core certainties” on which your project team should rely to ensure requirements discovery
• Manage uncertainty by discovering stakeholder desires through short feedback loops
• Specify as you go while writing small chunks of requirements
• Use storyboarding and paper prototyping to improve conversations with stakeholders
• Express stakeholder desires that are requirements with user stories
• Refine your user stories, and plan more effective Scrum sprints
• Confirm user stories by scripting behaviors with scenarios
• Transform scenarios into automated tests that easily confirm your software’s expected behavior as designs emerge and specifications evolve
• Ensure higher-quality software by specifying nonfunctional requirements
About the Author
Known for many years as an agile coach specialized in software architecture, Mario Cardinal is the co-founder of Slingboards Lab, a young start-up that brings sticky notes to smartphones, tablets and the web for empowering teams to better collaborate. A visionary and an entrepreneur, he likes to seize the opportunities that emerge from the unexpected. His friends like to describe him as someone who can extract the essence of a complicated situation, sort out the core ideas from the incidental distractions, and provide a summary that is easy to understand. For the ninth consecutive year, he has received the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award from Microsoft. MVP status is awarded to credible technology experts who are among the very best community members willing to share their experience to help others realize their potential.
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