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)

Eliciting requirements

At our first meeting with our client stakeholders, our objectives are fairly simple:

  1. Get to know the stakeholders and their role in the process we are implementing
  2. Obtain a basic understanding of the stakeholders' expectations
  3. Understand the stakeholders' goals and identify which capabilities we need to deliver in order to help them realize their goals

It is important that we keep conversations focused and targeted toward identifying requirement domain entities. It's also important that we validate their goals, so as to avoid any unrealistic or vanity goals that may derail the project.

Leading the initial discussions

When we arrive at the offices of Camford Press, we are introduced to the following people:

  • Professor Priya Chakrabarti, the editor-in-chief of Camford Press
  • Dr. Elizabeth Braddock, Camford University's IS manager

We are also informed that we should have met Dr. Tom Logan, Camford...