"Volere" Requirements process

I found in my library the "Mastering the Requirements Process" book, that some might know as the "Volere" book.

After many years I still find it very useful. I don't think the good Robertsons invented anything really new, but I do believe that this book covers 90% of the "how to" solve requirements problems in software development. And 90% is a lot !

The parts I appreciated more, this last time are:

Chapter 12. Prototyping the Requirements

Working together to the prototype, can really take out the users' implicit knowledge, correct lapses and help in many other ways.

Chapter 11. The Quality Gateway

You could try put an analyst that doesn't work on the same project, to read the project's requirements and have him refuse: all incomplete or inconsistent entries, frills, etc.
I think it can be a very powerful practice.

Comments

Why is business people so "unorganized" ?

The more I work, the more I see "strange" behaviour both on the side of our customers, both on our side and on my personal side. I will try to understand way better why we are so changing, hectic, often unpredictable in our business hours. I guess all this could be linked to the Complex, Complicated thing...

Practical advices by Karl Wiegers

I am reading the beautiful book "More About Software Requirements: Thorny Issues and Practical Advice" by Karl E. Wiegers. I'd like to share with you two of the most important points of his "10 cosmic truth", that to me are #6 and #9. #6 The requirements might be vague, but the product will be specific. I would say this is the usual point of "Natura abhorret a vacuo", that is here... each gap n requirements will be filled by some bad feature. #9 The customer is not always right, but the customer always has a point. Never underrate your key users

0. What's the matter with requirements ?

In my experience, many problems arising from the little care in requirements gathering are mainly due to these five factors: Pre-judgments: we believe we know how to do the right thing before we even realize what we have to do, We do like to "settle" things "later", End users often do not know exactly what they want, or express themselves in their own way and often different users have conflicting requirements, The requirements now are constantly changing: as soon as we catch some, some other requirement has already changed, Often there are organizational or "political" factors involved (ie. we listen more to the requirements of a manager who will never use the system rather than the requirement of the user who will use it 10 times a day).

REQUIREMENTS !

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