Screenplays and Requirements

Yesterday I was reding about movies screenplays and found some analogies with writing requirements.

The screenplay must be readable, because filmmakers need to understand
- what they are talking about,
- who will be there,
- how much it will costs
- etc.

It is usually roughly divided in three parts: the set-up, the development, the epilogue (eg. 30, 60, 30 pages)

Many things change before and during shootings: dialogues change, sometimes you shoot a scene at night instead of during the day, etc. so....
"If you don't like changes, then go write poetry". This one rings a bell, doesn't it ?

Also, it will be read by the actors, who will interpret it and change it in some ways.

Comments

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

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...

Vague requirements

An old school tip on vague requirements. A lot of words and sentences that we write in our requirements documents are often too vague . And these kind of unclear requirements have a big chance to cause problems at the end of your work. Blurred Something like: the system must be scalable , the system must be user friendly , the system must be quick . A good way to at least improve these three requirements could be something like this: 1. The system must be scalable up to 1.000 concurrent users without upgrading our servers, 2. The system must be usable by an average 50 years old accountant that only knows Word and some Excel, 3. The system must have any functinality ready on the screen in 1" when all concurrent users are using the system. So, by just exploring a bit more with the stakeholders, you can reduce ambiguity a lot. It's not too difficult and you can have a huge improvement in the end product or service.

REQUIREMENTS !

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