Customer Reviews

Managing Software Requirements: A Use Case Approach (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm quite surprised to be the first reviewer of the second edition of this book since it ia a reference in requirements management.

After, but even during, reading this book you perceive that it's a sum up of their vast, deep and long experience. The authors are the implementors of RequisitePro the tool, now part of the Rational Suite, for requirements management, but this book is not a promo. Instead the whole process of gathering, organizing, and connecting (to following steps in the process) requirements is presented. It's clear to them that basically you have to collect the clouded needs of the stakeholders and formalize them in a set of documents that you have to give to the development team. And the entire process should effectively work, managing change.

After introductory chapters, you are presented with six skills a requisite team shoud have to effectively manage requrements and each skill is expressed, through different chapters, with what needs to be done and what needs to be produced.

I especially reccommend team skill 6 'Building the Right System' because in those chapters you find how to connect use cases to design (chapter 25), how to generate test cases from use cases (chapter 26), traceability techniques and tool from user needs to code (chapter 27). Besides this, team skill 4 'Managing scope'.

Don't forget to read chapter 30 that illustrates and compares extreme, agile, and roubust requirements gathering methodologies, and chapter 31 that sums up all the steps illustrated in the book, suggesting a methodology for requirements gathering based on the kind of project.

In the appendix you find chapters with the whole results of the case study (HOLIS), the detailed template of basic and fundamental documents for software requirements management, and, above all, two chapters one that is a brief presentation of RUP and another that is an indication on how to link the process so far developed to SEI-CMM and ISO 9000:2000.

Another useful feature is the fact that every concept is illustrated with a simple,visual example (in visual modeling philosophy) that allows you to impress the concept in mind. At the end you come out with all the concepts you found (even from different sources, but unrelated) with the big picture.
This is my first book on software requirements but it has many pros and only one con. It's a recent book that is aware of the state-of-the-art in managing software requirements (see bibliography), and I'm sure that other books in this field can't be overwhelmingly better. The only con, that is easily resolvable, is that the documents illustrated could have been included in a CD with the book.

Being in the software industry for about 10 years, I had known that our teams often did a poor job of managing, gathering, and understanding requirements. Our projects suffered because of this, and despite my gut instincts we were going the wrong direction, I often felt that I didn't have statistics and the insight to counter some of the more experienced staff or management. This book greatly has changed that as now I can come in armed with info and present better ways to improve our requirements management. I now feel that we'll deliver the right product or system instead of breaking the hearts of our customer and our own team members (because we won't be failing!). The authors also write in a very clear manner and provide excellent examples. I can't believe I am writing this about a requirements book, but I found myself actually _looking forward_ to reading each chapter. I am now confident I have the tools we need to sucessfully manage requirements. Thanks for a great book!

This is by no means a page turner, but where I work recently changed their requirements management technique to a RUP model and this book has been a life saver.

It does spend lots of time trying to sell the process and giving you an overview of different types of approaches. I've been in the IT business for over 30 years and I must admit that methodoligies come and go, so I really didn't need the sales job. If I'm still doing this in another 10 years, I'm sure there will be some new, better, greater, methodology that everyone is hot on.

But what it does do is that it walks you through a case study. OK, the study is a little lame, but it's simple enough to use to introduce the concepts and it give examples, good examples. And there are templates. Templates that you can copy and use.

If you find yourself trying to figure out the RUP model, get the book, read it, use it on a small project 1st to get acquainted, and then add the technique to your resume and impress you boss.

I had the pleasure of speaking with the author (Don Widrig) over the phone prior to a job interview and he helped close the loop on some of the concepts presented in the book. I went into this book not knowing that use cases are used in the requirements analysis phase because honestly, I never did that phase properly and even my masters level courses didn't provide this information.

The book outlines the proper steps to gathering requirements from a use case perspective and provides numerous examples that you can actually apply in the real world. I would definitely recommend this book to any systems engineer, business analyst and even people interested in understanding process mapping more.

This book is very readable. The chapters are grouped into sections that cover broad skills used by teams in managing software requirements. Each chapter is fairly short and includes a concise summary at the end. The appendixes in the back of the book provide helpful examples of various software requirements documents.

Why not five stars? The book is good, but it's not great. The index is functional, but not exhaustive. It's a fine textbook but it's probably not a book that would stay on my bookshelf for years after the class is through.

I haven't finished reading this book yet, but so far it is pretty good. I recommend this book for someone is interested in learning about Managing Software Requirements.