Doing a Tap Dance on a Water Bed, Part 2

by Ken Orr

In my last Advisor (see "Doing a Tap Dance on a Waterbed, Part 1," 30 August 2007), I posed a question that has plagued large systems project managers for a very, very long time: "where do you start your systems requirements -- with the inputs, database, or the outputs?" I suggested that defining the outputs was the place to start because outputs represented the "independent variables" of the systems equation. In fact, I asserted that the right way to develop systems requirements is outputs then database then inputs. In this Advisor, I refer to this approach as "back-to-front" design.

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Doing a Tap Dance on a Water Bed, Part 2Thu Sep 13 08:20:13 CDT 2007