Optimize Your Entire Requirements Process–and Use Requirements to Build More Successful Software

Using IBM® Rational® RequisitePro®, you can systematically improve the way you create and maintain requirements–and use those requirements to build more effective, higher-quality software. Now, for the first time, there’s a comprehensive, hands-on guide to optimally using RequisitePro in real-world development environments.

Utilizing a start-to-finish sample project, requirements expert Peter Zielczynski introduces an organized, best-practice approach to managing requirements and shows how to implement every step with RequisitePro. You’ll walk through planning, eliciting, and clarifying stakeholder requirements; building use cases and other key project documents; managing changing requirements; transforming requirements into designs; and much more. Every stage of the process is illuminated with examples, realistic artifacts, and practical solutions.

This book is an invaluable resource for everyone who creates requirements, and everyone who relies on them: business analysts, systems analysts, project managers, architects, designers, developers, and testers alike.

Coverage includes

• Overcoming the three leading causes of project failure: lack of user input, incomplete requirements and specifications, and poorly managed change

• Understanding each type of software requirement–how they interrelate, and what makes a good requirement

• Establishing a Requirements Management Plan that describes how requirements are created and handled throughout the project lifecycle

• Developing a Vision document that can drive your project from beginning to end

• Creating high-quality use cases

• Using requirements as the basis for system design

• Leveraging RequisitePro features for improved project management

• Integrating requirements management with the IBM Rational Unified Process®

Foreword xvii

Preface xix

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the Author xxv

Part I: Overview 1

Chapter 1: Requirements Management 3

Chapter 2: Overview of RequisitePro 23

Part II: Requirements Management Activities 33

Chapter 3: Establishing a Requirements Management Plan 35

Chapter 4: Setting up the Project 45                            

Chapter 5: Requirements Elicitation 63

Chapter 6: Developing a Vision Document 99

Chapter 7: Creating Use Cases 129             

Chapter 8: Supplementary Specification 157  

Chapter 9: Creating Test Cases from Use Cases 191       

Chapter 10: Creating Test Cases from Supplementary Requirements 221       

Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Design 243

Chapter 12: Documentation 273

Part III: Other Topics 285

Chapter 13: Managing Projects 287

Chapter 14: Requirements Management in the Rational Unified Process 295

Part IV: Review 311

Chapter 15: Summary 313

Appendix: Sample Requirements Management Plan 319

Index 327

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

a framework for applying RUP - 2008-06-06
Reviewer Rating:
SAP devotes its software to running manufacturing processes and the like. In contrast, this book shows how IBM's Rational software is used to manage software development itself. It marries documents written in Microsoft Word with a backend database. The intent is to make seamless the transition between usages of both types of data.

The code provides a framework within which you can apply the Rational Unified Process. A somewhat heavyweight development approach. But one which has claimed many adherents in the software industry. So you can read this book as an explanation of RUP itself, along with an elaborate development environment for it.

One measure of how heavyweight RUP is can be this book, and its description of the RequisitePro package. Exceedingly detailed.

Must Have for IT Business Analysts - 2009-06-14
Reviewer Rating:
My firm recently began using ReqPro, but despite training sessions and "cheat sheets", many of us were still floundering. I looked for training materials on the IBM web site, but they were all too expensive, so I had to find an alternate source.

I found this book and decided to try it out. It has proved to be one of the best IT BA-related how-to books I've read (and I've read most of them). Not only does it provide clear, lucid instructions on how to use ReqPro, it gives concrete and valuable insight for organizing a large Requirements project. As a result of my own experiences, I recommended that all the BA's in my group be given a copy. It has received excellent reviews from them, as well.

Finally, while it is mainly a book about how to use ReqPro to manage RM, it also provides valuable insight to the generic RM process, that is useful even if you don't use the expensive IBM tool.

Good reference on ReqPro - 2008-12-29
Reviewer Rating:
NOT ABOUT RUP. The other reviewer must have pasted his review from another book. This book covers RequisitePro and is a good reference if you are planning to implement ReqPro or have only received a limited amount of support materials or training from IBM. Includes lots of screenshots, diagrams, and tables.
DOES NOT cover how to document requirements correctly.

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