Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing [Paperback]

Alan Mark Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2005

If you develop software without understanding the requirements, you're wasting your time.

On the other hand, if a project spends too much time trying to understand the requirements, it will end up late and/or over-budget. And products that are created by such projects can be just as unsuccessful as those that fail to meet the basic requirements.

Instead, every company must make a reasonable trade-off between what's required and what time and resources are available.

Finding the right balance for your project may depend on many factors, including the corporate culture, the time-to-market pressure, and the criticality of the application. That is why requirements management—gathering requirements, identifying the "right" ones to satisfy, and documenting them—is essential.

Just Enough Requirements Management shows you how to discover, prune, and document requirements when you are subjected to tight schedule constraints. You'll apply just enough process to minimize risks while still achieving desired outcomes. You'll determine how many requirements are just enough to satisfy your customers while still meeting your goals for schedule, budget, and resources.

If your project has insufficient resources to satisfy all the requirements of your customers, you must read Just Enough Requirements Management. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reviews "Al Davis takes for his subject the largely unexplored middle ground between the requirements purists and the requirements cowboys. Since it's this middle ground where real work gets done, his guidance is both useful and welcome."

—Tom DeMarco, coauthor of Peopleware Principal, The Atlantic Systems Guild, systemsguild.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dorset House (May 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932633641
• ISBN-13: 978-0932633644
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,203,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Al Davis is a professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He was a member of the board of directors of Requisite, Inc., acquired by Rational Software Corporation in February 1997, and subsequently acquired by IBM in 2003. He has consulted for many corporations over the past thirty years, including Boeing, Cigna Insurance, Federal Express, FrontRange Solutions, IBM, Loral, MCI, Software Productivity Consortium, Storage Tek, Sumitomo, and XAware. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of Omni-Vista, Inc., VP of Engineering Services at BTG, Inc., a Director of R&D at GTE Communication Systems. He has held academic positions at George Mason U and temporary academic positions and/or Fulbrights at Atma Jaya U in Yogyakarta (Indonesia); U of Jos (Nigeria); U Politécnica de Madrid (Spain); U of Technology, Sydney (Australia); and U of the Western Cape (South Africa).

He has been a fellow of the IEEE since 1994, and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the U Illinois in 1975. Find out more about him at www.reqbib.com/adavis.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I really wish that I had written this book., August 6, 2005

By 

Scott W. Ambler "Author, Agile Database Techn... (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing (Paperback)

The title says it all, this book really does explore all of the issues surrounding how to do just enough requirements management on your software development projects. I'd argue that it provides the insight that you require to put together an requirements program within your organization that is right for you, one that is sufficiently agile yet still reflects your situation. It explores strategies for eliciting requirements, prioritizing/triaging requirements, specifying requirements, and finally managing requirements change. Davis managed to pull off what few writers can do - by exploring the requirements management spectrum he has presented a range of strategies which should speak to both traditionalists and agilists. For traditionalists he presents some pretty convincing arguments that the "big requirements document up front" strategy might not be all that effective, and for agilists he presents convincing arguments that we need to invest some effort in requirements documentation. Most important is a running theme throughout the book: the goal isn't to write a perfect requirements document, it's to deliver working software which meets the needs of your stakeholders in a timely and cost effective manner. Sounds like really great advice to me.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Requirements Engineering - More isn't necessarily better, January 24, 2006

By 

Jutta Eckstein "Author of Agile Software Deve... (Braunschweig, Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing (Paperback)

I was very impressed when reading Alan Davis' latest book on 'Just enough Requirements Management.'

In his past work he has worked on bringing more formalism into requirements engineering in order to make them correct. However, over time he realized that this doesn't solve the real problems, because the requirements are changing despite the fact they've been formalized in advance.

There are not many people who are confident enough to admit that they have learned over the past years which also means that they've changed their mind. Alan is competent enough doing so which makes him really authentic.

A real eye opener for most of the readers is probably his illustration of the reality of ongoing requirements activities despite using a waterfall approach.

In this fast moving world, it is essential to know how much requirements engineering is necessary in order to being able to moving on and it is even more important to know when to stop doing requirements engineering for being in-time on the market.

I really recommend reading this book in order to know what barely sufficient requirement engineering is all about.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When the marketing and development teams square off, drop this book between them, April 21, 2010

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing (Paperback)

As all veterans of the software development process know, the software development and marketing teams often square off in a verbal and textual tussle regarding what the software should do. The marketing team often adopts a rigid, "We've got to have it all in order to sell it" position and the development team an opposite, "we can only do a limited number of absolutely essential features." Extremes tend to dominate over the means and exaggeration is often used to make a position sound more believable. It is much easier to sell your position if you use, "the life of the company is at stake" statements.
The reality is of course almost always in the middle and that is where Davis is. In emergency medicine, triage is the process where when faced with an overwhelming number of patients they are placed in one of three categories.

*) Those that will die no matter what the medical people do. All that can be done here is to ease the transition.
*) Those that will live even if the medical people do nothing. These people can be given minor aid such as painkillers but no major effort should be expended.
*) The injured that will die if left unaided and that will live if treated. These are the people that are given the extensive medical aid. The most critically injured are placed first in the treatment queue.

Davis applies the triage principle to the features that are to be included in the software to be developed.
In a series of meetings, both sides discuss what features are to be included with the desires of the customers given priority. Although it may sometimes be true in theory, it is a rare occasion in practice when developers and marketers know more about what to produce than the customers do. Charts, principles and any other relevant and understandable documentation can be used to justify a position or to record a decision or a development tactic.
The contents of appendix A should be hung on the wall of every room where developers work. It is a summary of the steps to follow including the all-important ranking of the value of features and customers. The old saying about, "the customer is always right" is false, as Davis points out, it should be amended to say, "Your best customer is always right." When you receive a large number of requests for features you should prioritize the features according to the value to the company of each customer. If customer A buys $1M worth of products and customer B buys $1K worth of products, then customer A should be more right than customer B when a decision is made about a feature to include.
Completeness and rigidity in requirements are the enemies of the completion of major projects, so the goal is to develop an encompassing set of flexible requirements that provide enough direction for system development. Developing these requirements is not an easy task, but it is a doable one. You can make that more likely by reading this book and adhering to the principles.