Mastering the Requirements Process: How to Build the System Your Customer Wants

Leader: Suzanne Robertson

Length of workshop: 3 days

General Overview:

The days of building software in "Internet time" are over. Building software today means that you are in it for the long haul. And you know that there are more demands than ever, and fewer resources to meet these demands. Getting the software right -- the first time -- is the only way to succeed under these circumstances. Today's requirements process is incremental with quick cycle times. It uses prototypes and scenarios, and it ensures that you get the right result by writing a fit criterion, a test case for the requirement.

Requirements are the most misunderstood part of systems development, but also the most crucial. Get the requirements wrong and you get the wrong system. Your requirements process must be your own, but it should be based on field-proven techniques and templates. This course shows you how you can employ the Volere process -- used and improved by thousands of organizations around the world -- to help you design products that will add long-term value to your customers' organizations and write requirements that will help your developers create these exact products. You'll receive the Volere Requirements Specification Template -- downloaded by over 13,000 users -- to take home with you along with advice on how to make this your own template.

Workshop Goals:

This seminar will give you:

• A process for gathering the correct requirements
• Methods of eliciting requirements from all the stakeholders
• Strategies for identifying when your solution precisely matches the users' needs
• The ability to write a complete and unambiguous requirements specification
• Improved relationships with your software customers

Intended Audience:

This seminar has indispensable information for business analysts, systems managers, project leaders, consultants and systems analysts and planners. This material applies to all stakeholders: users and customers will benefit from learning how to participate in this multi-disciplinary approach. It is for anybody who has a responsibility to deliver the right products.

Outline:

• The Requirements Process

  This section introduces you to the Volere process -- a solid strategy for gathering the correct requirements. Understand how the pieces fit together -- from the project blastoff that established the product's purpose and scope, to the trawling and prototyping activities that elicit the product's requirements, through the Quality Gateway where requirements are made testable, and to the final review of the specification that discovers any missing requirements.

• Project Blastoff

  This activity lays the foundation for the requirements project by establishing the Scope-Goals-Stakeholder trilogy. This initiation activity establishes the precise scope of the work to be studied, determines a testable goal for the project, and uses stakeholder maps to identify all the sources of requirements. In short, the blastoff ensures that the project is viable and worthwhile.

• Trawling for Requirements

  At the core of any requirements process is the ability to get people to tell you what they really need, rather than what they think you might be able to deliver, or what they feel their boss might want. You'll learn how to apply business use cases, use case workshops, and interviewing and other strategies to discover exactly what the users need and want.

• Functional Requirements

  Functional requirements are things that the product must do. They are discovered by inspecting the work that the user does, and then determining what part of that work the automated product can do. This proposed interaction between user and product is modeled with use case scenarios. From these, you derive and write the functional requirements.

• Non-functional Requirements

  Non-functional requirements are those properties that the product must have, such as the desired look and feel, the usability, the performance and its cultural aspects. This section discusses the different types of non-functional requirements and shows you how to use the template and other methods to find the qualitative requirements for your product.

• Managing Your Requirements

  Requirements are the lynchpin of any development effort, and as such have to be written correctly and managed effectively. This section demonstrates the use of a template and other devices to help you write requirements. It also looks at requirements management issues like traceability, prioritization and conflicting requirements. You'll also receive a review of most of the automated tools that are available to help manage requirements specifications.

• The Quality Gateway

  Testing is most effective when it is done early in the development cycle. In the Quality Gateway, requirements are tested before they are added to the Requirements Specification. This Quality Gateway rejects out-of-scope, gold-plated, non-viable and incorrect and incomplete requirements. You also learn how to attach an unambiguous fit criterion to each requirement. This makes the requirement testable, as well as ensuring that the solution you implement precisely matches the customer's expectations.

• Prototyping and Scenarios

  Some requirements are not properly understood until the user has had the opportunity to use the product. Prototyping is a way of discovering requirements by testing mock-up products for the user's work. This section explores the merits of both low and high fidelity prototypes, and how they and scenarios can be used to discover and demonstrate the requirements in action.

• Your Requirements Process

  Your next requirements project is different from anybody else's. This section reveals how to make your own requirements process as effective and efficient as possible. You'll look at accelerating the requirements gathering by establishing the scope then building an early throwaway prototype. The requirements Knowledge Model is introduced as a basis for you to improve your requirements process. Each part of the process is then examined so that you and other workshop participants can discuss problems and ideas related to your processes, and how you can use this to improve your existing requirements process.

You'll also receive:

• Your own copy of the acclaimed book Mastering the Requirements Process by Suzanne Robertson and James Robertson
• A copy of the Volere Requirements Specification Template, providing a foundation for writing your own specifications
• A survey of the tools currently available to assist requirements capture and recording
• References to books and sources of up-to-date requirements engineering techniques
• An opportunity to discuss any requirements problems one-on-one with a requirements professional

Exercises:

The course also includes intensive exercises that help you apply the concepts presented in the seminar. You and other participants will work in teams to discover, specify and evaluate requirements for a significant system. The exercises provide practical experience in building requirements specifications by:

• Defining the project's scope, its goals and the relevant stakeholders
• Identifying business use cases and product use cases
• Prototyping the product
• Applying the requirements specification template
• Defining functional and non-functional requirements
• Deriving the fit criterion, or measurement, for each requirement

For more information on bringing this workshop to your organization, contact Dennis Crowley by phone at +1 781 641 5125, by fax at +1 781 648 8707, or by e-mail at sales@cutter.com.