Requirements-Related Resources By Dan Tasker

Articles and Posts FEATURED Jan 01, 2022 10 mins 6650 Views 0 Comments 3 Likes

The objective of this web page is to provide links to freely available resources I’ve produced based on my 50+ year career in Information Technology. These links are organized as if they were published in a professional reference book for business analysts.

That book would be titled Requirements for Information System Solutions with a sub-title A Practical Guide for Business Analysts. It would be organized into the following sections:

Preface

Part 1 - Functional Requirements (16 Links)

Part 2 – Information System-Managed Data (10 Links)

Appendix A - Other Requirements-Relevant Articles (7 Links)

Appendix B – Case Study (1 Link)

Appendix C – Template-Based Requirement Examples (9 Links)

Back Cover – Reader Comments

NOTE: See Resources Version 1.0 for brief descriptions of each resource.

Preface

If you’re familiar with my resources and come to this page looking for more, links are contained with each section in the form of a Table of Contents below.

If you have viewed only one or two of the resources I’ve published, I highly recommend my Top 7 Takeaway Points article. Each point discussed includes links to resources relevant to that point.

Part 1 - Functional Requirements

Webinars

Keeping High-Level Requirements High-Level

Minimum Detail Requirements, Maximum Requirement Detail

Guaranteed Requirement Reusability

Requirements In Context Article Series

Part 1 - Just Know it!

Part 2 - The Functional View from 10,000 feet

Part 3 – Scope = High-Level Requirements

Part 4 – Keeping High-Level Requirements High Level

Part 5 – Managing Data-Specific Business Needs Using a Data Dictionary

Part 6 – Detailed Requirements for User Interfaces and Reports

Part 7 – Detailed Requirements for Data Importing and Exporting

Part 8 – Detailed Requirements for Automated Functionality

Part 9 – Tool Support for Managing Requirements [in Context]

Requirements for Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Systems

Part 1 - What Requirements Are Needed When Selecting a COTS Information System?

Part 2 - What Requirements Are Needed When Implementing a COTS Information System?

Stand-Alone Articles

Product Requirements – Three Scenarios

4 Levels of User Stories for Information Systems

Part 2 – Information System-Managed Data

Information System Data Fundamentals Article Series

Part 1 – Series Introduction

Part 2 – Organization-Independent Records

Part 3 – Line-of-Business-Specific Records

Part 4 – Product, Customer, Sale, and Location Records

Part 5 – Identification Fields

Part 6 – Name Fields

Part 7 – Quantity Fields

Part 8 – Classification Fields

Part 9 – Point-In-Time Fields

Part 10 – Record Navigation Fields

Back Cover

The back cover, if the book existed, would include edited blurbs praising it. The following were submitted by readers of specific resources.

Neetu:

“… an informative article. I loved reading it.”

sightshooton :

“Amazing information … thank you so much for taking the time to share a wonderful article.”

Raj Usask:

“… Thanks for teaching us this complex topic …”

Joana Davidson:

“This is worth sharing!”

dealycont:

“… everything you share with us is current and very informative…”

Resource Descriptions

NOTE: This section retains the original (Version 1.0) content of the Resources Page that includes brief descriptions of each resource including a link to the resource.

Links are categorized as follows:

Article Series (3)
Stand-Alone Articles (9)
Case Studies (1)
Webinars (3)
Templates (9)

Article Series

Requirements for COTS Information Systems – The objective of this series was to help business analysts distinguish between the level of detail needed in functional requirements for selecting and for implementing a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) information system.

Part 1 - What Requirements Are Needed When Selecting a COTS Information System? - Discusses the role of Capability-Based High-Level Requirements (HLRs) when an organization has chosen to acquire a COTS information system.

Part 2 - What Requirements Are Needed When Implementing a COTS Information System? - Discusses capability-based detailed requirements (DTRs) for a selected COTS information system.

Requirements In Context – The objective of this series was to help business analysts distinguish between high level and detail level requirements. It introduces the concepts of five fundamental capability types for information system functional requirements. The examples of HLRs and DTRs in the articles are drawn an end-to-end set of example requirements presented in the Trips-R-You case study - documented utilizing a set of spreadsheet-based templates.

Part 1 - Just Know it! – Introduces the series and defines its primary context as functional requirements for business information systems.

Part 2 - The Functional View from 10,000 feet - describes a generic model of functions applicable to any organization.

Part 3 – Scope = High-Level Requirements - looks at scoping a project that involves an information system as part of the solution to be delivered.

Part 4 – Keeping High-Level Requirements High Level - introduces five fundamental capability types that can be provided by an information system.

Part 5 – Managing Data-Specific Business Needs Using a Data Dictionary – discusses capturing data-specific needs as part of, but separate from, detailed functional requirements.

Part 6 – Detailed Requirements for User Interfaces and Reports - discusses the two capability types that involve data recognizable by humans.

Part 7 – Detailed Requirements for Data Importing and Exporting - addresses business needs involving machine-readable data being sourced or reported by the information system.

Part 8 – Detailed Requirements for Automated Functionality - discusses the business need for the information system to manipulate data it has access to for the purpose of updating or creating new data.

Part 9 – Tool Support for Managing Requirements [in Context] - discusses extending commercially-available requirements and application life cycle management tools to handle structured requirement detail examples presented in the series.

Information System Data Fundamentals – The objective of this series was to give business analysts an appreciation of the information aspect of an information system solution. The first three articles focus on Record-related concepts. The remaining articles each focus on one of the seven fundamental Field Types. Examples of each type are drawn from the Trips-R-You case study that utilizes a business-friendly Data Dictionary spreadsheet template for documenting Record and Field-level details.

Part 1 – Series Introduction - Includes definitions of the terms Information System, Record, and Field used throughout the series.

Part 2 – Organization-Independent Records – discusses records such as GL ACCOUNT, STAFF MEMBER, and ASSET. These types of records are well-understood within any organization large enough to warrant information systems supporting Accounting, Human Resources, or Asset Management functions.

Part 3 – Line-of-Business-Specific Records – discusses four fundamental data concepts associated with an organization’s line(s) of business: Products, Customers, Sales, and sale-related Locations.

Part 4 – Product, Customer, Sale, and Location Records - discusses record types supporting the concepts product, customer, sale, and location. The names given to these records varies depending on the line(s) of business an organization is in and its sales processes.

Part 5 – Identification Fields – discusses record business identifiers. Their purpose is to uniquely identify an instance of a record. Users of an information system are expected to have knowledge of, or access to, this value.

Part 6 – Name Fields – discusses fields intended to contain a user-recognizable value by which a person or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.

Part 7 – Quantity Fields – discusses fields intended to satisfy the need to say something quantitative about a record. A quantity field requires particular attention be paid to its unit of measure and precision.

Part 8 – Classification Fields - allows the recording of a meaningful fact about a record instance, with that fact drawn from a pre-established set of values. The organization may be interested in just the values, or there may be additional information about each value that the system needs to manage.

Part 9 – Point-In-Time Fields - supports a business need for an information system to know when an event took place (or will take place). Date, Time, and Date/Time field values represent a quantity of time involving a specific unit of measure and precision.

Part 10 – Record Navigation Fields - These fields do not themselves contain business data, but support an information system’s ability to navigate from a given record instance to business data in related record instances.

Stand-Alone Articles

Top 7 Take-away Points from a 50+ Year Career in IT – The seven takeaway points discussed are:

Information Systems Have 5 Fundamental Functional Capability Types
SMEs Have Day Jobs
Information Systems Support Business Activities
A Capability Has a LOT of Requirement Detail
Data Requirements Are Reusable
A Diagram Is Not a Picture
A BA Should Talk Business Function but Think Business Data

Happy, Alternate, and Exception Paths are Applicable to More Than Just Use Cases - This article presents examples of Business Process, Activity, and State Transition diagrams with these concepts represented simply using the common “Traffic Light” colors green, amber, and red.

Fundamentals of Non-Functional (Quality) Requirements in 1 Easy Lesson - The objective of this article is to help business analysts deal with the task of eliciting and documenting non-functional requirements (NFRs) - also known as Quality Requirements. It describes NFR fundamentals in terms of who, what, when, where, and why.

Business Rules, Seriously? – presents five fundamental points about business rules applicable to business analysts that focus specifically on the task of defining business rules for an organization – separate from functional requirements for an information system.

How to Create a ‘Less is More’ Stakeholder-Friendly Data Model in Minutes - describes an easy-to-create, simple-to-understand, view data model. The view is of just those records involved in an information system capability supporting a specific business activity.

The Magic Behind Functional Requirements – Data! – presents techniques for eliciting functional requirement details based on the data the information system is dealing with during a given business activity.

What’s In A BABOK Name? – discusses issues with the terms Business, Stakeholder, and Solution for requirement categories defined in the IIBA BABOK Version 3. Provides rationale for using the terms High-Level and Detailed requirements with stakeholders during requirement elicitation.

4 Levels of User Stories for Information Systems – Intended to help business analysts capture functional requirements for an information system as User Stories. It presents, for each level, the stakeholders involved, story refinement objectives, and an end-to-end user story example.

Product Requirements – Three Scenarios - discusses three fundamental scenarios a BA might face when asked to document product requirements for such an information system.

Case Study

Trips-R-You Web-Based Flight Booking Case Study - A pseudo case study acting as a context for an end-to-end example high-level and detailed requirements elicited as part of an information system delivery project.

Webinars

In 2021 I was invited by ModernAnalyst.com to present a series of webinars based on my Requirements In Context (RIC) article series. The material in that series was condensed into three one-hour webinars available On-Demand using the following links:

Keeping High-Level Requirements High-Level – Based on RIC article series Parts 1through 4 described above.

Minimum Detail Requirements, Maximum Requirement Detail – Based on RIC series Parts 6, 7, & 8 of the RIC article series described above.

Guaranteed Requirement Reusability – Based on RIC article series Parts 5 & 9 of the RIC article series described above.

Spreadsheet-Based Templates

HLR & Detailed Requirement Statement Examples – template shown supporting examples of high-level and detailed requirement statements from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Record & Field Data Requirement Detail Examples - template shown supporting examples of record and field requirement detail from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Business-Friendly Data Dictionary – The same template used to present examples of record and field requirement details from the Trips-R-You Case Study, but with those examples removed to make it available as a reusable template.

User Interface Requirement Detail Example - template shown supporting an example of functional and operational detail for a specific user interface capability from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Report Requirement Detail Example - template shown supporting an example of functional and operational detail for a specific report capability from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Data Import Requirement Detail Example - template shown supporting an example of functional and operational detail for a specific data import capability from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Data Export Requirement Detail Example - template shown supporting an example of functional and operational detail for a specific data export capability from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Automated Function Requirement Detail Example - template shown supporting an example of functional and operational detail for a specific automated function capability from the Trips-R-You Case Study.

Requirements in Context – Tool Extension Meta-Model - presents details of a meta-model that can be used to extend a commercially available Requirements Management (RM) or Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool. The rationale for applying these extensions to such a tool is discussed in the RIC series article Part 9: Tool Support for Managing Requirements [In Context]

COTS Information System Detailed Requirements Template - This spreadsheet-based template is intended to support documenting detailed requirements (DTRs) for selecting and implementing Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) systems.

Dan Tasker

Dan is the author of over 30 requirements-related articles and other resources. His 50+ year career in Information Technology has involved organizations in a variety of industry sectors in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. His business analysis experience includes projects involving in-house software development, software vendor solution development, and COTS software acquisition and implementation. He continues to be passionate about requirements for information system solutions and helping business analysts produce them. He can be contacted at [email protected].