5. Business Requirements: Know the Problem Before You Create the Solution

By the time the project team gets together you’ll probably have heard, or have come up with, a lot of ideas about what needs to be done. There may already be lists of features provided by some prominent members of the company (your business stakeholders), along with their opinions about which features are most important. These are elements of the business requirements for the project, and they’re a good start. To make sure you have a complete solution at the end of the project, or a strong vision to help guide your iterations along the way, you’ll need to generate and clarify requirements from multiple viewpoints. In this chapter we’ll focus on gathering and detailing requirements from your business stakeholders.