Book Image

Managing Software Requirements the Agile Way

By : Fred Heath
Book Image

Managing Software Requirements the Agile Way

By: Fred Heath

Overview of this book

Difficulty in accurately capturing and managing requirements is the most common cause of software project failure. Learning how to analyze and model requirements and produce specifications that are connected to working code is the single most fundamental step that you can take toward project success. This book focuses on a delineated and structured methodology that will help you analyze requirements and write comprehensive, verifiable specifications. You'll start by learning about the different entities in the requirements domain and how to discover them based on customer input. You’ll then explore tried-and-tested methods such as impact mapping and behavior-driven development (BDD), along with new techniques such as D3 and feature-first development. This book takes you through the process of modeling customer requirements as impact maps and writing them as executable specifications. You’ll also understand how to organize and prioritize project tasks using Agile frameworks, such as Kanban and Scrum, and verify specifications against the delivered code. Finally, you'll see how to start implementing the requirements management methodology in a real-life scenario. By the end of this book, you'll be able to model and manage requirements to create executable specifications that will help you deliver successful software projects.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Introducing BDD

In this section, we will be introduced to BDD, as it forms an essential part of the methodology described in this book. BDD was first introduced as a concept by Dan North back in 2006 (refer to Further reading link #2), as a way to improve communication and collaboration and to facilitate behavior-based automated testing. BDD is often referred to as an outside-in development methodology, as it focuses on system behavior required by the stakeholders as the driving mechanism for developing software. This well-defined system behavior is referred to as a feature in BDD parlance.

Since North's original article, BDD has matured and evolved and now has a rich ecosystem supporting it, with tools such as Cucumber, SpecFlow, and JBehave appearing in many a developer's tool-belt. Gojko Adjiz (yes, him again) helped solidify BDD principles in his book Specification by Example (refer to Further reading link #4). As a result, some people actually use the terms BDD and...