Beautiful Teams

Act I: Girding Our Loins

Wherein we develop a strategy and assemble the cast.

The initial goal of the project team is to develop a requirements specification that is sufficiently accurate and complete to allow the software development to begin. The decision to build the system in-house or to outsource part or all of the development is deferred to a later date. Our requirements analysis team consists of three people:

• Janet is an experienced developer and analyst who is taking on her first significant project management role. She will plan the project activities, track our progress, and serve as one of the requirements analysts. Although fairly young, Janet is mature, doesn't get rattled easily, and has a calm demeanor.

• Devon is a more junior developer. Bright and energetic, he's looking forward to building some analyst skills. If the CTS software is implemented in-house, Devon will be one of the developers.

• I'm Karl. I've worked at Contoso for 15 years as a research scientist, software developer, software manager, and quality engineer. Having pursued ways to improve requirements engineering for some time, I frequently serve as an internal consultant. I will work half-time in an analyst role on the CTS project.

Janet meets with Paul and explains that our team of analysts is going to do our best to meet his needs. But first, of course, we need to understand his requirements for the CTS. Paul's frustration is evident. "I gave your predecessors on the two previous teams my requirements," ...