"A comprehensive solution to the requirements challenges faced by every development team. Full of insight and ideas all developers can learn from." --Ivar Jacobson "Many projects fail for the simple reason that the developers fail to build the right thing: They either deliver a system that does not meet the expectations of its intended users, or they deliver a system that focuses on secondary functions at the expense of its primary use. Drawing on their extensive experience, Dean and Don demonstrate how to employ an industrial-strength requirements process, one that helps ensure you will build the right thing. Developers of any kind of application should read this book." --Grady Booch Despite the wealth of development knowledge, experience, and tools generally available today, a substantial percentage of software projects continue to fail, often because requirements are not correctly determined and defined at the outset, or are not managed correctly as the project unfolds. Clients do not always know or express their needs precisely, and too often designers and developers do not ask the right questions at the right times. As a result, projects often spin out of control as "feature bloat" and shifting priorities cause budgets and schedules to exceed expectations. Managing Software Requirements focuses on this critical cause of failure and offers a practical, proven approach to building systems that meet customers' needs--on time and within budget. The authors are skilled practitioners who have spent their careers in the trenches building high-quality applications, including safety-critical, real-time systems. Using an informal, approachable style, their own war stories, and a comprehensive case study they show how designers and developers can effectively identify requirements by employing the power of use cases and more traditional forms of requirements expression. The book illustrates proven techniques for determining, implementing, verifying, and validating requirements. It describes six vital Team Skills for managing requirements throughout the lifecycle of a project: Analyzing the Problem, Understanding User Needs, Defining the System, Managing Scope, Refining the System Definition, and Building the Right System. Managing Software Requirements specifically addresses the ongoing challenge of managing change and describes a process for assuring that project scope is successfully defined and agreed upon by all stakeholders. Topics covered include:

• The five steps in problem analysis

• Business modeling and system engineering

• Techniques for eliciting requirements from clients, users, developers, and other stakeholders

• Applying and refining use cases

• Prototyping

• Organizing and managing requirements information

• Establishing project scope and managing customers

• Using both informal and technical methods for specifying requirements

• How to measure and improve the quality of your product's requirements

• Moving from requirements to implementation

• Verifying and validating the system

• Managing change

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 18 Ratings

Excellent, informative guide to requirements gathering - 2002-03-21
Reviewer Rating:
This is an excellent book for building a strong foundation in requirements gathering. The authors have clearly been doing requirements gathering for years and are kind of enough to share volumes of their hard fought wisdom with the rest of us. I found parts of the book, especially the beginning, a little slow to get to the point. However you can just skim any parts that might be a little drawn out and there is more than enough outstanding content to make it very worthwhile. This book provides wonderful insight, persuasive arguments, multiple views and ideas for how requirements are best gathered, a clear style of explaining concepts, and a pleasant and entertaining writing style. Requirements gathering is such a large topic that the book could not possibly teach EVERYTHING you might ever need to know about requirements gathering, but it gives an outstanding basis from which you can continue to build in whichever directions are most appropriate for you. A very expereienced requirements gatherer might find the book somewhat introductory but would certainly still gain wonderful insights from parts of the book. I think both beginners and experts will benefit from this book.

Fails to explain the GAP between Biz Objectives & Outcomes - 2003-09-15
Reviewer Rating:
Software requirements begin with business objectives, definition, requirements, and expectations. Business community always looks at the bigger picture, on the other hand, systems or business analyst merely focus on specific information, result is the actual requirements get lost between the translations and the software projects fail or are delayed and exceed their budget. This book eloquently spells out six skills crucial for defining comprehensive software requirements, like analyzing the problem, understanding user needs, defining the system, managing scope, refining system definition and system validation. If you have difficulties in defining and maintaining the system requirements, this book could significantly improve the focus. However, this book fails to explain the gap between business objectives and outcome. However, linking this book to preliminary step of software development would overcome initial snag, ensuring the system design and implementation likely to be successful. By Vivek Dixit, Stanford.edu

Anyone involved with developing software - read this book - 2003-03-01
Reviewer Rating:
I have survived many approaches to "capturing" a system design over the last 22 years. This book, however, lays out a tactical plan that can be used to flush out design issues up front, where the seeds of larger design problems start.

There are several references to "Quality Before Design", and this book extends those ideas into a very tangible process of requirements management. The authors were working with these ideas before the Rational system was developed, and the book ties together its approach with the Capability Maturity model and the Rational Unified process at the very end of the book.

The book is very clearly written, and organized to build upon earlier concepts and help the reader take the ideas from concept to practice.

A must for anyone in software development - 2002-10-05
Reviewer Rating:
This is the most inspiring book I have read for years! I recommend it to *anyone* involved in software development or even those who are about to make an investment in software for own use. Stakeholders at all levels, even the guardians of the company's money bag, the users, developers, project managers etc. should all read - and then practice what the authors preach. This comprehensive book should make it easy to adopt the suggested processes.

Basics - 2002-02-12
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book to read and have in the bookself. It gets you started and even if you have knowledge of requirements management, you should see it what's inside. However I do software that is very complex (telecommunications) and for this kind of environment this book just isn't enough. I would have hoped for more compact text with fewer pictures and more concrete real world examples. This book resembles too much children's books.

Well anyway, as I said this book is anyway a must read, but you have to read more. I found many good ideas and could broaden my understanding by reading "Customer Centered Products" by Ivy F. Hooks and Kristin A. Farry.

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