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)

Scripting Scenarios

Scenarios are a feature's essence. They reflect the change in the feature's behavior under different circumstances. We call this section Scripting Scenarios as Scenarios are written similarly to a stage play or film script. They are written using prompts and specific actions for particular actors. Before we discuss how to script our Scenarios, let's see how we can discover them first…

Discovering Scenarios

A good way to visualize scenarios is by using the metaphor of a Rubik's cube. Imagine that your feature is a Rubik's cube. You have it in your hands and you turn it around, looking at it from different angles. You notice how each side has different colors in different arrangements. It's the same cube, but each time you turn it, you discover some new image patterns and cell arrangements:

Fig. 3.1 – Feature as a Rubik's cube

Fig. 3.1 – Feature as a Rubik's cube

When discovering Scenarios, we follow a similar mental...