Writing It Requirements For Traditional Methodologies

Use 4 Simple Rules to Improve the Quality of IT Requirements for Classic and Waterfall Software Development Approaches

What you'll learn

Write requirements that focus on the business need

Test the relevance of each requirement to ensure that it is in scope for your project

Create and maintain a question file to reduce the impact of incorrect assumptions

Minimize the risk of scope creep caused by missed requirements

Confirm that each audience shares a common understanding of the requirements

Use our Peer Perception technique to find ambiguous words and phrases that can lead to misunderstandings

Apply 3 simple rules to create technology-independent, component-focused requirements

Reduce the ambiguity of a statement by adding context and using standard terms and phrases

Requirements

No technical background required

Need or desire to define user requirements, features, user stories, etc.

Interest in finding more efficient ways to communicate business needs to the development community

HTML5 compatible browser for exercises

No additional materials are required

Description

                     Effective Requirements Reduce Project FailuresWriting requirements is one of the core competencies for anyone in an organization responsible for defining future Information Technology (IT) applications. However, nearly every independently executed root-cause analysis of IT project problems and failures in the past half-century have identified "misunderstood or incomplete requirements" as the primary cause. This has made writing requirements the bane of many projects.The real problem is the subtle differences between "understanding" someone else’s requirement and "sharing a common understanding" with the author."Writing IT Requirements for Traditional Methodologies" gives you a set of 4 simple rules that will make your requirement statements more easily understood by all target audiences on traditional (aka "Waterfall") projects. The focus is to increase the "common understanding" between the author of a requirement and the solution providers (e.g., in-house or outsourced IT designers, developers, analysts, and vendors).The rules we present in this book will reduce the failure rate of projects suffering from poor requirements. Regardless of your job title or role, if you are tasked with communicating your future needs to others, this course is for you.(DISCAIMER: This course does not cover User Stories)How to Get the Most Out of this Course?To maximize the learning effect, you will have optional, online exercises to assess your understanding of each presented technique. Lessons prefaced with the phrase “Exercise” contain an exercise that we have prepared to give you an opportunity to try the presented technique yourself.These exercises are optional and they do not “test” your knowledge in the conventional sense. Their purpose is to demonstrate the use of the technique more real-life than our explanations can supply. We hope you enjoy them and that they make it easier for you to apply the techniques in real life. 

Overview

Section 1: Setting the Stage for Writing Effective Requirements

Lecture 1 Welcome to the Course

Lecture 2 Why Do You Need Better Requirements?

Lecture 3 Managing Uncertainty

Lecture 4 The "Real" Problem with Requirements

Section 2: Capturing Requirements

Lecture 5 Follow the KISS concept

Lecture 6 Define the Business Need

Section 3: Requirements and Project Scope

Lecture 7 Keep Your Requirements in Scope

Lecture 8 Combat Scope Creep from the Start

Lecture 9 Recap of Rules One through Three

Section 4: Finding and Fixing Ambiguous Requirements

Lecture 10 Ambiguity Is Our Worst Enemy

Lecture 11 The Challenge to Understanding

Lecture 12 Use Peer Reviews to Increase Understandability

Lecture 13 Combatting the Major Cause of Project Failure

Section 5: Best Practices for Improving the Understandability of Your Requirements

Lecture 14 Use Acronyms and Corporate Standards

Lecture 15 Add Context to Eliminate Ambiguity

Lecture 16 Write to the Readability Level of Your Audience

Lecture 17 Recap of Rule 4

Section 6: In Closing

Lecture 18 Claim Your Job Aid

Lecture 19 Bonus Lecture: Special Offers

Subject Matter Experts,Product Owners,Business Process Managers,Business Process Users,Product and Project Managers,Line Managers,Business Analysts,Anyone wearing the Business Analysis (BA) hat!