Book description
"A comprehensive solution to the requirements challenges faced by every development team. Full of insight and ideas all developers can learn from." --Ivar Jacobson
"Many projects fail for the simple reason that the developers fail to build the right thing: They either deliver a system that does not meet the expectations of its intended users, or they deliver a system that focuses on secondary functions at the expense of its primary use. Drawing on their extensive experience, Dean and Don demonstrate how to employ an industrial-strength requirements process, one that helps ensure you will build the right thing. Developers of any kind of application should read this book." --Grady Booch
Despite the wealth of development knowledge, experience, and tools generally available today, a substantial percentage of software projects continue to fail, often because requirements are not correctly determined and defined at the outset, or are not managed correctly as the project unfolds. Clients do not always know or express their needs precisely, and too often designers and developers do not ask the right questions at the right times. As a result, projects often spin out of control as "feature bloat" and shifting priorities cause budgets and schedules to exceed expectations. Managing Software Requirements focuses on this critical cause of failure and offers a practical, proven approach to building systems that meet customers' needs--on time and within budget.
The authors are skilled practitioners who have spent their careers in the trenches building high-quality applications, including safety-critical, real-time systems. Using an informal, approachable style, their own war stories, and a comprehensive case study they show how designers and developers can effectively identify requirements by employing the power of use cases and more traditional forms of requirements expression. The book illustrates proven techniques for determining, implementing, verifying, and validating requirements. It describes six vital Team Skills for managing requirements throughout the lifecycle of a project: Analyzing the Problem, Understanding User Needs, Defining the System, Managing Scope, Refining the System Definition, and Building the Right System. Managing Software Requirements specifically addresses the ongoing challenge of managing change and describes a process for assuring that project scope is successfully defined and agreed upon by all stakeholders.
Topics covered include:
The five steps in problem analysis
Business modeling and system engineering
Techniques for eliciting requirements from clients, users, developers, and other stakeholders
Applying and refining use cases
Prototyping
Organizing and managing requirements information
Establishing project scope and managing customers
Using both informal and technical methods for specifying requirements
How to measure and improve the quality of your product's requirements
Moving from requirements to implementation
Verifying and validating the system
Managing change
The book concludes with a step-by-step guide to incorporating these powerful techniques into future projects.
0201615932B04062001
Table of contents
- Copyright
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1. Introduction
-
2. Analyzing the Problem
- 4. The Five Steps in Problem Analysis
- 5. Business Modeling
- 6. Systems Engineering of Software-Intensive Systems
-
2. Understanding User Needs
- 7. The Challenge of Requirements Elicitation
- 8. The Features of a Product or System
- 9. Interviewing
- 10. Requirements Workshops
- 11. Brainstorming and Idea Reduction
- 12. Storyboarding
- 13. Applying Use Cases
- 14. Role Playing
- 15. Prototyping
- 3. Defining the System
- 4. Managing Scope
-
5. Refining the System Definition
- 23. Software Requirements
- 24. Refining the Use Cases
- 25. A Modern Software Requirements Specification
- 26. On Ambiguity and Specificity
- 27. Quality Measures of Software Requirements
- 28. Technical Methods for Specifying Requirements
-
6. Building the Right System
- 29. Building the Right System Right: Overview
- 30. From Requirements to Implementation
- 31. Using Traceability to Support Verification
- 32. Validating the System
- 33. Using ROI to Determine the V&V Effort
- 34. Managing Change
- 35. Getting Started
- A. HOLIS Artifacts
- B. Vision Document Template
- C. Modern SRS Package Template
- D. Requirements Management in the SEI-CMM and within ISO 9000
- E. Requirements Management in the Rational Unified Process
- Bibliography
Product information
- Title: Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach
- Author(s):
- Release date: October 1999
- Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
- ISBN: 9780201615937
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