Quality Software Project Management

Chapter 16. Eliciting Requirements

Almost everyone involved in software engineering or software project management during the last 20 years is well aware of the importance of requirements. We rarely hear of a success story declaring victory over the ever-elusive set of specs, but we often hear poor requirements cited as public enemy number one. As developers and managers, we're cautioned about the exorbitant cost to the project of a missed or incorrect requirement—the most expensive error to correct and the most damaging to customer relations. We're advised of the meaninglessness of a fuzzy requirement, and we're counseled about tester angst over an imprecise one. If we are far enough off the mark with requirements, we may be building a completely ...