Managing Software Requirements: A Use Case Approach, Second Edition

Chapter . Team Skill 4 Summary

In Team Skill 4, Managing Scope, we learned that the problem of project scope is endemic. Projects typically are initiated with approximately twice the amount of functionality that the team can reasonably implement in a quality manner. This shouldn't surprise us since it is the nature of the beast: customers want more, marketing wants more, and we want more, too. We just need to put ourselves on a diet sufficient to make sure that we can deliver something on time.

We looked at various techniques for setting priorities, and we defined the notion of the baseline—an agreed-to understanding of what the system will do—as a key project work product, our touchstone and reference point for decisions and assessment. We learned ...