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Just Enough Requirements Management:
Where Software Development Meets Marketing

by Alan M. Davis

ISBN: 978-0-932633-64-4  
©2005   256 pages   softcover  
$33.95 (plus shipping)

Subject(s): Requirements Management, Requirements Specification, Requirements Triage

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Take on "Just Enough" Software Requirements
Without Blowing Your Deadlines and Budgets

About the Book

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.

This Title Is Now Also Available As an eBook Through Pearson Education at www.informit.com. To Order,

Click Here!

 

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


"If you repeatedly find yourself having troubles managing requirements for your information system development projects, or if you have a hard time communicating with your marketing or business departments or even with your customers, this book will undoubtedly make your day."

Valentin Crettaz
Val's Blog, javaranch.com


"No one else, perhaps, could take a long view of the passionate arguments between traditionalists, formalists, and agile methods people, or of the differing viewpoints of developers, managers, and marketing. . . .

". . . it takes a light, informed, politically-skilful and industrially-informed look at the problem of doing just enough. This is very timely, given the 'heavy RE' versus 'agile methods' debate: and Davis succeeds in pointing out where the balance lies. Davis writes in a fresh and engaging way, telling stories from his long and varied experience as a consultant (and researcher).

"Davis has come up with yet another good, practical book for industry."

Ian Alexander, Requirenautics Quarterly
http://i.f.alexander.users.btopenworld.com


"The writing style Davis uses equals a lecture series on requirements management. He uses fictional and personal anecdotes to describe the ideas, which makes for an easy learning experience. . . .

"Whether you are already involved in requirements management or are just getting started, Just Enough Requirements Management explains the process perfectly."

Chris A. Grady, StickyMinds.com Review
http://www.stickyminds.com


". . . the book does an outstanding job conveying best practices and techniques for requirements management, provides definitions of key terms throughout the book, and provides graphs to illustrate points, as well as diagrams to provide further understanding of key concepts. . . .

"I highly recommend this book!"

—Jim Tisch, PM Boulevard Review
http://www.pmboulevard.com


"Thank you very much for this deghtful and well-written
book . . ."

—Christof Ebert, ALCATEL Network Systems


"The book is about practice, not theory, and Davis gives us the benefit of his long tenure in the field. . . .

"The best things about Just Enough Requirements Management are that it is based on experience, and it is honest. Davis tells it like he sees it. Sometimes he even disagrees with things he said in his earlier books, based on lessons he learned in the interim. He doesn't shy away from controversy, either. He dismisses agile approaches to requirements as ineffective. And although he sees value in use cases and scenario-based requirements, he regards them as a rather minor adjunct to the traditional, declarative style of writing requirements.

"I recommend this book to anyone who works with requirements. Although you might not agree with everything Davis says, you should be able to glean something you can use to improve your requirements management process."

—Jim Heumann, The Rational Edge


". . . Davis outlines a middle-of-the-road approach based on capturing the user's requirements in natural language (where any technical jargon would be that of the user vice that of the developer), and listing all requirements (so that they can be 'managed').

". . . this book is all about balance, and is targeted for the vast majority whose available resources are less that their estimated needs; Alan offers some good advice on how to balance the two."

—Joe Saur, ACM Engineering Notes


". . . presents a 'good enough" approach to requirements management. This approach strikes a balance between the 'no requirements document' approach favored by agile developers (who tend to rely on resident customers/users instead of documentation), and the very formal requirements specification favored by academics (which tends to lead to very precise requirements that resist change). . . .

"This is a very common-sense book, where Davis leads us to some very non-traditional software engineering conclusions! . . . If you care about the software engineering subject of requirements, this book is a must read."

—Robert L. Glass, The Software Practitioner

Features
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