Mastering the Requirements Process

Autorentext

James Robertson and Suzanne Robertson are two of the most respected names in business analysis and requirements discovery. During the Robertsons' careers, their books, templates, training, and consulting have helped hundreds of companies to upgrade their requirements discovery process. The Robertsons have written numerous books, among others the three previous editions of this book, Business Analysis Agility, and with their co-authors at the Atlantic Systems Guild, the acclaimed Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies. James and Suzanne live in London and France.

Klappentext

One of the joys of product development, whether it be software, service, or hardware, is getting it right. The way to get it right is to uncover the real business problem, and to write the requirements for the solution that best solves that problem.

Without the right requirements it is impossible to build the right solution. Mastering the Requirements Process, Fourth Edition, gives you an industry-proven process for getting to the essence of the business problem and then writing unambiguous and testable requirements for its solution.

This fourth edition is an almost complete rewrite that brings requirements discovery into today's world--it is the book for today's business analyst. Product owners and project leaders will also find it valuable as it explains how to discover precisely what the customer needs and wants, and to do it effectively in any business or project environment.

The book tells you how to:

• Use the Volere requirements process to discover requirements in both traditional and agile environments
• Incorporate off-the-shelf (OTS) solutions into your requirements discovery
• Use artificial intelligence (AI) as part of your requirements discovery, and as part of your business solution
• Use quickly sketched prototypes to explore the problem space
• Understand functional and non-functional requirements
• Write better agile stories
• Make your requirements and stories measurable and testable using fit criteria
• Use business events as the heartbeat of business analysis
• Discover requirements in agile, commercial, and milspec project environments
• Find and prioritize your customer segments
• Leverage systems thinking when discovering requirements
• Use story maps and other requirements repository techniques
• Know which trawling techniques are the most effective for requirements discovery
• Synchronize your requirements discovery with agile development teams
• Make better decisions in the early days of a project to increase your chances of success
• Employ the Volere requirements specification template (downloaded 10,000+ times) as the basis for your own requirement specifications "One of the most valuable things about this book is that it provides a process to follow that will get people asking the right questions and expand their perspective on the problem."
  --Kevin Brennan

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Inhalt

Foreword xxiii
Preface xxv
Acknowledgments xxvii
About the Authors xxix

Part I: Requirements Are the Root of Everything 1

Chapter 1: Requirements Fundamentals 3
Requirements Fundamental 1 3
Requirements Fundamental 2 3
Requirements Fundamental 3 4
Requirements Fundamental 4 5
Requirements Fundamental 5 5
Requirements Fundamental 6 6
Requirements Fundamental 7 6
Requirements Fundamental 8 7
Requirements Fundamental 9 7

Chapter 2: Your Requirements Arena 9
A Requirements Process 9
Review 16

Part II: Project Blastoff 19

Chapter 3: Understand the Real Problem 23
The Problem 24
The Real Business Problem 25
The Goal Statement 28
Review 30
Resources 31

Chapter 4: The Value of Solving the Problem 33
What Does Your Customer Value? 33
Receiving Value 37
Review 39
Resources 39

Chapter 5: Goals-Scope-Stakeholders 41
Goals 42
Scope 45
A Presumed Solution 52
The Context Diagram 53
Stakeholders 57
Review 63
Resources 64

Chapter 6: Customer Segments 65
Customers and Their Segments 65
Personas 68
Prioritizing the Customer Segments 71
Review 73
Resources 73

Chapter 7: Business Events 75
Understanding the Work 76
What Are Business Events? 77
Why Business Events Are a Good Idea 82
Finding the Business Events 82
Ready-made Solutions 84
Review 86
Resources 86

Chapter 8: Prioritizing the Business Events 87
Priority, Priority, Priority 87
Estimating Effort 89
Prioritization Factors 91
Approval Voting 93
Business Analysis Planning 93
Review 94
Resources 95

Chapter 9: To Go or Not to Go? 97
The Likelihood of a Successful Project 98
Ready-made Solutions 101
Develop the Business Case 101
To Go or Not to Go 106
An Agile Approach to Blastoff 107
Review 109
Resources 109

Part III: Prototyping for Requirements 111

Chapter 10: Generating Sacrificial Candidate Solutions 115
Multiple Candidates 115
Review 118
Resources 118

Chapter 11: Prototypes, Prototypes, Prototypes 119
Types of Prototypes 119
Review 130
Resources 130

Chapter 12: Ready-Made Solutions 131
Prototyping with Ready-Made Solutions 131
Choosing Ready-Made Solutions 136
Review 139
Resources 140

Chapter 13: Creative Candidate Solutions 141
Creative Triggers 141
Lateral Thinking 148
Removing Constraints 148
Combination 150
Review 150
Resources 150

Chapter 14: Probing and Exploring the Candidates 153
Probing 153
Exploring 157
Double-Loop Learning 161
Review 164
Resources 165

Chapter 15: Using Prototypes as the Specification 167
The Prototype as the Specification 168
What to Do with the Prototype 169
Evolutionary and Sacrificial Prototypes 171
Review 172

Part IV: Trawling for Requirements 173

Chapter 16: The Essence of the Problem 177
The Problem 177
Abstraction 178
Essence 178
Ask WhyAgain, and Again, and Again 180
Referred Pain 182
Disguised Problems 183
Review 184
Resources 185

Chapter 17: Business Events and Business Use Cases 187
Business Events 187
The Business Use Case 190
Trawling the BUCs 191
The Desired Future BUC 192
Prototyping and BUCs 193
Describing the BUCs 193
Review 194
Resources 194

Chapter 18: The Brown Cow Model 195
How Now, Brown Cow? 195
How to Use the Brown Cow Model 198
Review 200
Resources 200

Chapter 19: Workshops 201
BUC Workshops 201
Mechanics of a Successful Workshop 203
Review 206
Resources 206

Chapter 20: Scenarios 207
What Is a Scenario? 207
The Essence of the Business 212
Alternatives 215
Exceptions 216
Misuse Cases and Negative Scenarios 218
Review 218
Resources 219

Chapter 21: Stories 221
The Business Event Story 221
Review 230
Resources 230

Chapter 22: Business Process Models 231
Notation 232
Activity Diagrams 233
Data Flow Diagrams 234
Business Events and BUCs 236
When to Use Process Models 238
Review 240
Resources 241

Chapter 23: Stored Data 243
Data Models 243
CRUD Check 250
Review 252
Resources 252

Chapter 24: Other Trawling Techniques 253
Apprenticing 254
Interviewing 255
Business Rules 258
Rich Pictures 260
Creativity Workshops 261
Document Archeology 262
Customer Experience Analysis 264
Review 266
Resources 267

Part V: Writing Good Requirements and Stories 269

Chapter 25: Functional Requirements 271
Uncovering the Functional Requirements 272
Deciding the Solution's Functionality 273
Writing the Requirements 275
The Snow Card 278
Technological Requirements 281
Level of Granularity 281
Conditional Requirements 282
Avoiding Ambiguity 282
Grouping Requirements in Your Specification 284
Requirements for Ready-Made Pr…