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)

Creating a product backlog

A product backlog is simply a list of all the Features that we, the system builders, need to implement in order to successfully deliver the system. In order to understand the role and significance of the backlog, we need to understand how the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) works.

The Agile SDLC

The SDLC consists of three major phases, as depicted in the following diagram:

Fig. 6.2 – SDLC

Fig. 6.2 – SDLC

These phases are as follows:

  • Requirements gathering and analysis
  • Development
  • Integration and verification

In Agile development, these three phases are not singular. They are repeated in continuous iterations, each iteration focusing on specific functionality or goals. Neither are they sequential; they can and do occur in parallel. Within the same iteration, a team member may be doing requirements gathering, while a second one writes code for a feature and a third team member verifies a different feature...