Writing Better Requirements

<p>&nbsp; </p> <li>Table of Contents <p>1. Introduction 9</p></li> <li><p>1.1 Why do requirements matter? 9</p><p>1.2 Who are requirements for? 12</p><p>1.3 Different names for requirements 13</p><p>1.4 Different types of specification 14</p><p>1.5 The challenge of writing better requirements 15</p><p>1.6 The requirements writing process 18</p><p>2. Identifying the stakeholders 21</p><p>2.1 Different types of stakeholder 21</p><p>2.2 Your house extension: a simple case? 22</p><p>2.3 A practical approach to identifying stakeholders 23</p><p>Exercise 1: Listing the stakeholders 23</p><p>3. Gathering requirements from stakeholders 26</p><p>3.1 Possible techniques 26</p><p>Exercise 2: Asking 'why?' 28</p><p>3.2 Interviews 28</p><p>3.3 Workshops 32</p><p>3.4 Experiencing life as a user 36</p><p>3.5 Observing users at work 36</p><p>3.6 Acting out what needs to happen 36</p><p>3.7 Prototypes 38</p><p>4. Other sources of requirements 40</p><p>4.1 Possible sources 40</p><p>Exercise 3: Extracting requirements from source documents 44</p><p>Exercise 4: Extracting requirements from a memo 45</p><p>4.2 Getting requirements for mass-market products 45</p><p>4.3 User requirements in subsystem projects 46</p><p>5. Structuring the requirements 47</p><p>5.1 You need structure as well as text 47</p><p>5.2 Breaking the problem down into steps 48</p><p>5.3 Organizing requirements into scenarios 50</p><p>5.4 Examples of goal decomposition 52</p><p>Exercise 5: A structure for user requirements 53</p><p>5.5 Handling exceptions 53</p><p>Exercise 6: Could anything go wrong here? 54</p><p>Exercise 7: Exceptions 55</p><p>5.6 Examples and exercises in requirement structure 57</p><p>Exercise 8: Creating a heading structure 57</p><p>Exercise 9: The right document for each subject 57</p><p>Exercise 10: Wrongly placed requirements 58</p><p>6. Requirements in context 59</p><p>6.1 The user requirements document 59</p><p>6.2 Organizing the constraints 60</p><p>Exercise 11: Writing constraints 64</p><p>6.3 Defining the scope 64</p><p>Exercise 12: Restricting the scope 65</p><p>6.4 Requirement attributes 65</p><p>6.5 Keeping track of the requirements 67</p><p>7. Requirements writing 70</p><p>7.1 Quality, not perfection 70</p><p>7.2 Sketch, then improve 70</p><p>7.3 Anatomy of a good requirement 70</p><p>7.4 Guidelines for good requirements 71</p><p>7.5 Don't write like this 72</p><p>Exercise 13: Good requirements 75</p><p>Exercise 14: Writing requirements for familiar domestic systems 75</p><p>Exercise 15: Ambiguous requirements 76</p><p>8. Checking and reviewing 78</p><p>8.1 Checking the document structure with users 78</p><p>8.2 Checking the requirements 80</p><p>Exercise 16: Checking individual requirements 81</p><p>Exercise 17: Checking a set of requirements 82</p><p>8.3 Reviewing 83</p><p>8.4 Success - the reviewed document 85</p><p>Exercise 18: Reviewing 85</p><p>A: Answers to exercises 87</p><p>Exercise 1: Listing the stakeholders 87</p><p>Exercise 2: Asking 'why?' 87</p><p>Exercise 3: Extracting requirements from source documents 87</p><p>Exercise 4: Extracting requirements from a memo 88</p><p>Exercise 5: A structure for user requirements 88</p><p>Exercise 6: Could anything go wrong here? 89</p><p>Exercise 7: Exceptions 89</p><p>Exercise 8: Creating a heading structure 90</p><p>Exercise 9: The right document for each subject 90</p><p>Exercise 10: Wrongly placed requirements 90</p><p>Exercise 11: Writing constraints 91</p><p>Exercise 12: Restricting the scope 92</p><p>Exercise 13: Good requirements 92</p><p>Exercise 14: Writing requirements for familiar domestic systems 93</p><p>Exercise 15: Ambiguous requirements 93</p><p>Exercise 16: Checking individual re</p></li> <p></p>