Effective Requirements Practices

And with this new attention comes a pragmatic guide to proven industry practices for emerging and fulfilling customer requirements. More than just an idealized view of the topic, Effective Requirements Practices addresses both managerial and technical issues that determine the success--or failure--of a project. The requirements practices described in this book enable you to redirect resources to satisfy customers' real business needs. Together, these practices provide a proven framework and process that help keep projects on the right track and ensure that requirements are addressed properly throughout a project's life cycle.

This book demonstrates proven methods and techniques. Topics covered include

• Strategies and methods for getting to the "real" customer requirements
• Developing and improving a requirements process
• The roles and responsibilities of the Joint Team for requirements elicitation
• Designing system requirements with the system architecture in mind
• Maintaining effective communication among team members
• Maintaining a set of work products
• Requirements verification and validation
• Accommodating changes in requirements throughout the project
• How the recommended requirements practices utilize the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) framework
• Achieving an environment of continuous improvement and mutual support of one another
• Also provided is a sample process that has been used in industry and deployed and tailored on dozens of projects. In addition, Effective Requirements Practices offers you recommendations for incorporating industry best practices into the development effort.

Contents

(Each chapter concludes with a “Summary” and with “Key References and Suggested Readings.”)

• Foreword.
• Preface.
• Acknowledgements.

1. Introduction.

• The State of the Industry Today.
• The Need to Use Effective Requirements Practices.
• The Requirements Process.
• What Is a Process?
• What Is the Requirements Process?
• Benefits of a Process Approach.
• Pitfalls Concerning Using a Process Approach.
• About This Book.
• Roles.
• Key Terms.
• A Requirements Taxonomy.
• Systems and Software Engineers.
• Recommended Mindset for Readers of This Book.
• The “Team,” the “Project,” and the “Project Manager.”
• Footnotes in This Book.
• Key References and Suggested Readings at the End of Each Chapter.
• Upcoming Topics.

2. Commit to the Approach.

• What Do We Mean by Commitment?
• How Can Commitment Be Attained and Maintained?
• Recommendations to Assist in Evolving the Partnering Approach.
• Involve Managers with Authority in the Partnering Workshop.
• Develop a Requirements Plan.
• Utilize a Set of Mechanisms, Methods, Techniques, and Tools.
• Work Toward a Quality Culture.

• What Is a “Joint Team?”
• What Does the Joint Team Do?
• How Is the Joint Team Created?
• Who Should Be on the Joint Team?
• How Often Should the Joint Team Meet?
• What Metrics Need to Be Created and Tracked?
• Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) from Effective Requirements Practices.
• Customer and Supplier Roles.

• Recommendations to Facilitate getting to the Real Requirements.
• Invest More in the Requirements Process.
• Train PMs to Pay More Attention to the Requirements Process.
• Identify a Project Champion.
• Develop a Definition of the Project Vision and Scope.
• Identify a Requirements Engineer and Utilize Domain Experts to Perform Requirements Engineering Tasks.
• Train Developers Not to Make Requirements Decisions and Not to Goldplate.
• Utilize a Variety of Techniques to Elicit Customer and User Requirements and Expectations.
• Use Cases.
• Train Requirements Engineers to Write Good Requirements.
• The Impact of Requirements Errors.
• What Is a Good Requirement.
• Document the Rationale for Each Requirement.
• Utilize Methods and Automated Tools to Analyze, Prioritize, and Track Requirements.
• Approaches and Tools for Prioritizing Requirements.
• Collect Requirements from Multiple Viewpoints.
• Consider the Use of Formal Methods When Appropriate.
• Pitfalls to Watch For.

• What Is a Process?
• How Is a Process Designed?
• Why Is a Requirements Process Needed?
• Goals of Requirements Engineers.
• A Sample Requirements Process.
• How Can Organizations Create or Tailor a Requirements Process?
• Tailoring of Processes.
• Web Support: An Organizational Process Asset Library.

• Background.
• The System Engineering Process.
• Recommendations.
• Consider the Design-Ability of the System When Addressing the Requirements.
• Allocate Requirements to Functional Partitions, Objects, People, or Support Elements to Support Synthesis of Solutions.
• Utilize a System Architecture Process.
• Consider Open Systems Standards.
• Guidelines for Architecting.
• Another View.

• Setting the Stage.
• Natural Human Tendency.
• A Proactive Approach to Achieve Effective Communication.
• An Example Mechanism.
• When Negativism Shows Up.
• Another Valuable Mechanism — Brown Bags.
• Guidelines for Effective Meetings.
• Guidelines for Effective Emailing.
• The Value of a Common Vocabulary.
• The Use of Vertical Experts.
• Avoid Multiple Locations.
• A Final Recommendation.

• The Foundation for System Development.
• What are the Candidate Methods and Techniques?
• Which Methods and Techniques are Best?
• Use of Function Points for Software Estimation.
• Quality Function Deployment.
• What Comprises the Requirements Specification?
• The Rationale for Prioritizing Requirements.

• V&V Terminology.
• The Importance of Verification and Validation.
• Verification and Validation Planning.
• Verification Methods.
• Validation and Verification Techniques.
• Using Traceability to Support Verification.
• A Structured Approach to Testing.
• Recommendations.
• Pitfalls in Performing Requirements Verification and Validation.

• Why Such Emphasis?
• Planning for Changes in the Requirements.
• The Recommended Mechanism.
• Requirements Leakage.
• Focus on What Counts!
• How Much Can Requirements Change?
• A Way to Deal with Requirements Creep Contractually.
• Other Recommendations.
• Maintain Minutes of Meetings.
• Maintain the Set of Work Products That Collectively Comprise the Requirements Specification.
• Agree on Cost and Schedule Impacts of Requirements Changes.
• Keep People Informed.
• Be Proactive in Considering Impacts on Staffing Changes.
• Don't Try to Take Advantage of Unproven or Untrained Methods.
• Try Not to Allow Your Customer to Force Methods Upon You.

• What's All the Fuss?
• What can We Do about It?
• Recommendations.
• Provide to the Development Team an Understanding of the Relevant Policies, Processes, and Procedures to Be Used.
• Utilize a Practical, Effective Project Management Approach.
• Ensure That Selected Members of the Development Team Have Domain Knowledge.
• Perform the Development Effort Using Known Familiar (Trained) Proven Processes, Mechanisms, Methods, Techniques, and Tools.
• Provide and Utilize Mechanisms to Foster Effective Communications Throughout the Development Team.
• Utilize Peer Reviews and Inspections to Remove Defects from Processes and Work Products.
• Ensure That Configuration Management Is Effective.
• Foster an Independent Quality Assurance Role That Proactively Assists and Supports the Development Team and Provides Value-Added to the Project.
• Ensure That Subcontractors Are Managed Such That Their Contributions Are Effective.
• Use Appropriate, Useful Metrics to Manage the Project.
• Ensure That a Systematic Approach to Involving the Customer in This Entire Effort Is Working.
• In Mature Organizations, Processes Are Managed Quantitatively. A Defect Prevention (DP) Process Is Working Effectively, a Technology Change Management (TCM) Process Facilitates Identification of Effective Technologies Throughout the Enterprise, a Process Change Management (PCM) Process Is Used, and There Is Extensive Re-Insertion and Reuse Throughout the Organization.
• Musings on Software Project Management.

12. How to Proceed.

• Common Issues.
• Key Factors in Addressing these Issues.
• The Customer.
• Requirements as a Key Driver to Any Systems or Software Effort.
• Financing Improvements in the Requirements Process.
• Survival of the Fittest.
• Management Awareness and Expectations.
• Metrics.
• The Development Team.
• Where to Start.
• How to Prioritize Needed Efforts.
• Relationship of the Recommended Effective Requirements Practices to the Capability Maturity Model.
• But, I Have So Many Things to Do.
• What if We Are “Further Along” on Our Project?

• Epilogue.
• List of Acronyms.
• Glossary.
• Bibliography.
• Author Index.
• Subject Index.