Latest Requirements Buzz

Requirements Gathering - Choosing the Right Tools
The intent of this section is to offer you some insight into the various requirements gathering tools available and the factors you need to consider when choosing which to use for your project. You'll need to take training in the use of these tools before becoming proficient in their use. The nature of the software application or web site your project will deliver will influence your decision on which requirements gathering tools to use. Other factors that will influence your decision are the number and type of business users, customer service reps, and maintenance people and their locations....

How to fulfill stakeholder's requirements
Modeling an enterprise is not a simple task, you have to consider different stakeholders with different requirements, but also with different preferences on how they would like to access the enterprise knowledge. This presentation outlines different solutions all based on a central repository, where your enterprise can get the most benefit out of the enterprise model.

4th International Workshop on Visualization in Requirements Engineering
Topics of interest include experience papers, formal methods, emerging technologies, best practices, research proposals, evaluations and comparisons that focus on visualization techniques for requirements engineering activities.

The Sound of Valid Requirements
If requirements management practices were songs entering a popularity contest, requirements validation would hardly be a favorite contender. It's easy to understand why: validation is usually a tedious, time consuming task, and, as with nearly every quality control activity, it is supposed to reveal defects, going against our natural desire of being right, not making mistakes, and singing in tune.

What Is User Requirements Capture?
A User Requirements Capture is a research exercise that is undertaken early in a project lifecycle to establish and qualify the scope of the project. The aim of the research is to understand the product from a user’s perspective, and to establish users’ common needs and expectations. The user requirements capture is useful for projects that have a lack of focus or to validate the existing project scope. The research provides an independent user perspective when a project has been created purely to fulfil a business need. The requirements capture findings are then used to balance the business g...

Eliminating Ambiguity from Your Requirements
From a developer's standpoint, few things are more frustrating than having to make lots of calls and research to learn what to create because the requirements are ambiguous. From an analyst's view, few things are more frustrating than having your requirements misunderstood. Yet so often, requirements are ambiguous to their readers, despite the writer's best efforts.

An Overview of Business Requirements
Before you can chart how you are going to implement a solution, everyone involved in the development effort must agree on why you need it to start with and that it is the very best solution available. Business requirements are fundamental to any development effort because they define where you are going by articulating the business problem and its solution—why it is needed and how to measure its success.

Requirements Gathering - Define Requirements Accurately
The requirements you capture must be stated in business terms, must be clearly stated, must be concise, and must be feasible. To ensure that requirements are clearly stated, you should have them proof read by someone external to the project (or at least someone not familiar with the requirements you've captured). Any questions raised by your proof reader should trigger a re-write of that requirement. Clean the language up until your proof reader understands the requirement.

Gathering Software Requirements - Identify the Right Approvers
We mentioned previously in this section that a Statement of Work (SOW) embedded in the contract for a project will serve as the master blueprint for your requirements. Although we haven't consistently stated this disclaimer everywhere in this section it should be understood that no requirement, no matter how you gathered it, no matter who contributed it, no matter who approves it, can be a part of the required product unless it's stated or implied in the SOW! Keep this fact in mind when you identify the approvers of your requirements.

The Problem With Defining Information Requirements
There are a lot of problems associated with IT, such as computer performance, capacity planning, security, networking, disaster recovery, but probably the biggest problem is requirements definition. In other words, accurately defining the information needs of the end-user.