All Entries in the "Requirements" Category
Seven Steps and a Nice Little Process Template
Welcome to Practical Analyst, a site specializing in practical insight for business analysts and project professionals. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by! I recently read and highly recommend Barbara Carkenord’s book, Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis, and must [...]
Don’t Forget the Constraints!
In addition to eliciting and specifying the requirements, an important part of the analyst’s value-add lies in helping business stakeholders and delivery teams identify and understand the constraints that will apply for the solution.
Begin with what you HAVE to do
The simple fact is, you can’t know all the details upfront. You can and should, however, be able to work with your stakeholders to identify the broader range of necessary capabilities and constraints, or “placeholders for conversations”.
Time Travel for Context-free Use Cases
Yes, sometimes we BA’s need to think of creative ways to help us withhold the technology and implementation detail from our requirements.
More on Separating Rules from Use Cases
Keeping business rules out of the flow of events makes a use case easier to maintain and reuse.
Use Case Basics: Keeping it Simple
A few simple tips for identifying and documenting use cases.
Could requirements analysis be automated?
Could systems and software be used to take the place of the requirements analyst?
Structured Analysis & Big, Thick Documents
Great book on modeling & systems analysis and yet another critique of “big, thick documents.”
What’s in a Signature?
Is there such thing as a peaceful, amicable “sign-off”?
Requirements Are the Keystone
Requirements are the keystone of a successful project implementation.
Bright Idea on Requirement Character Limits?
Adam Feldman, blogging from Bright Green Projects’ “Bright Ideas” blog poses a fun and interesting question. Twitter limits entries to 140 characters. Should we do the same for requirements?
Requirements Elicitation: “Most Valuable” Questions
A few of my favorite requirements elicitation interview questions, and an idea for cataloging them.
Requirement Visualization: Mock-up & Wireframe Goodies
Here are some great product links and quotes on rapid UI prototyping that have helped reinforce the value of visualized requirements in my mind, and that I thought you might find interesting.
Requirements Management Link Love (09-13)
A little linky love this week for those of us who like to read all about requirements management.
Sherlock Holmes on the Necessity of Requirements
During some time off a while back, I went to Project Gutenberg and downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I still haven’t read them all, but I was surprised to see the great detective speak out so strongly in favor of requirements in A Scandal in Bohemia.
Use Cases or User Stories? Read Up!
There have been some really interesting articles in recent days and weeks that have been comparing use cases and user stories, and highlighting the advantages of each. I’ve cherry-picked some of the best from my collection of bookmarks to share with you here.
Regardless of what method you use, it is good to be familiar with the available options and their relative strengths and weaknesses.
Requisite Pro + Doors = ?
What does IBM’s acquisition of Telelogic (Doors) mean to the future of both products? What does it mean for their users? I thought I’d share a recent article I came across that shows that IBM has made some progress in determining how they’ll leverage both products.