Exploring Requirements One
Exploring Requirements One
Quality Before Design
About the Book
John von Neumann once said, "There's no sense being exact about something if you don't even know what you're talking about." In a world that is growing increasingly dependent on highly complex, computer-based systems, the importance of defining what you want to make before making it—that is, knowing what you're talking about—cannot be stressed enough.
Here's an innovative book that gives you the understanding you need to give people the solutions they want. The collaborative team of Gause and Weinberg tells how you can assure the requirements are right—before the product is designed.
Written by two recognized authorities in the field, this book is a collection of ideas developed, refined, and tested during their more than sixty combined years of work with both large and small organizations.
The techniques formulated in Exploring Requirements are not confined to software development; they have been used effectively to develop a wide range of products and systems—from computer software to furniture, books, and buildings.
Systems analysts and anyone involved with the challenges of the requirements process will greatly benefit from this book.
Renowned leaders in the software industry have this to say about Exploring Requirements:
"Anyone who wants to build a product should understand this book."—Watts S. Humphrey, SEI
About the Author
Bundles that include this book
Table of Contents
- Exploring Requirements 1: Quality Before Design
- Preface
- Preface to the Ebook Version
- Part I Negotiating a Common Understanding
-
Chapter 1. Methodologies Aren’t Enough
- 1.1 CASE, CAD, and the Cockroach Killer
- 1.2 Methods’ Effects on Problems
- 1.3 Maps and Their Notation
- 1.4 Making Sure Everyone Can Read the Map
- 1.5. Maps of Requirements Are Not Requirements
- 1.6. Helpful Hints and Variations
- 1.7 Summary
-
Chapter 2. Ambiguity in Stating Requirements
-
2.1 Examples of Ambiguity
- 2.1.1 Missing requirements
- 2.1.2 Ambiguous words
- 2.1.3 Introduced elements
- 2.2 Cost of Ambiguity
-
2.3 Exploring to Remove Ambiguity
- 2.3.1. A picture of requirements
- 2.3.2 A model of exploration
- 2.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 2.5 Summary
-
2.1 Examples of Ambiguity
-
Chapter 3. Sources of Ambiguity
- 3.1 An Example: The Convergent Design Processes Lecture
- 3.2 A Test for Attentiveness
-
3.3 The Clustering Heuristic
- 3.3.1 Observational and recall errors
- 3.3.2 Interpretation errors
- 3.3.3 Mixtures of sources of error
- 3.3.4 Effects of human interaction
- 3.4 Problem Statement Ambiguity
- 3.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 3.6 Summary
-
Chapter 4. The Tried but Untrue Use of Direct Questions
-
4.1 Decision Trees
- 4.1.1Order of questions
- 4.1.2 Traversing the decision tree: an example
- 4.2 Results of an Ambiguity Poll
- 4.3 What Could Possibly Be Wrong?
- 4.4 Real Life Is More Real Than We Like to Think
- 4.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 4.6 Summary
-
4.1 Decision Trees
- Part II Ways to Get Started
-
Chapter 5. Starting Points
- 5.1 A Universal Starting Point
-
5.2 Universalizing a Variety of Starting Points
- 5.2.1 Solution idea
- 5.2.2 Technology idea
- 5.2.3 Simile
- 5.2.4 Norm
- 5.2.5 Mockup
- 5.3. The Can-Exist Assumption
-
5.4 An Elevator Example
- 5.4.1 Naming our project
- 5.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 5.6 Summary
-
Chapter 6. Context-Free Questions
- 6.1 Context-Free Process Questions
- 6.2 Potential Impact of a Context-Free Question
- 6.3 Context-Free Product Questions
- 6.4 Metaquestions
- 6.5 Advantages of Context-Free Questions
- 6.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 6.7 Summary
-
Chapter 7 Getting the Right People Involved
-
7.1 Identifying the Right People
- 7.1.1 Customers versus users
- 7.1.2 Why include the users?
- 7.1.3 The Railroad Paradox
- 7.1.4 The product can create users
- 7.1.5 Are losers users?
-
7.2 A User-Inclusion Heuristic
- 7.2.1 Listing possible user constituencies
- 7.2.2 Pruning the user list
-
7.3 Participation
- 7.3.1 Who participates?
- 7.3.2. When do they participate?
- 7.3.3. How do we obtain their judgments?
- 7.4 Plan for Capturing Users
- 7.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 7.6 Summary
-
7.1 Identifying the Right People
-
Chapter 8. Making Meetings Work for Everybody
-
8.1 Meetings: Tools We Can’t Live With, or Without
- 8.1.1 A terrible, but typical, meeting
- 8.1.2 Meetings as measurements
-
8.2 Participation and Safety
- 8.2.1 Establishing an interruption policy
- 8.2.2 Setting time limits
- 8.2.3 Outlawing personal attacks and put-downs
- 8.2.4 Reducing pressure
- 8.2.5. Allowing time to finish, yet finishing on time
- 8.2.6 Handling related issues
- 8.2.7 Amending the rules
-
8.3 Making It Safe Not to Attend a Meeting
- 8.3.1 Publishing an agenda and sticking to it
- 8.3.2 Staying out of emergency mode
- 8.3.3 Handling people who don’t belong
- 8.3.4 Including the right people
- 8.4 Designing the Meeting You Need
- 8.5 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 8.6 Summary
-
8.1 Meetings: Tools We Can’t Live With, or Without
-
Chapter 9. Reducing Ambiguity from Start to Finish
- 9.1 Using the Memorization Heuristic
- 9.2 Extending the Ambiguity Poll
- 9.3 “Mary had a little lamb” Heuristic
- 9.4 Developing the “Mary conned the trader” Heuristic
- 9.5 Applying the Heuristics to the Star Problem
- 9.6 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 9.7 Summary
- Part III Exploring the Possibilities
-
Chapter 10. Idea-Generation Meetings
- 10.1 A Typical Brainblizzard
-
10.2 First Part of the Brainstorm
- 10.2.1 Do not allow criticism or debate
- 10.2.2 Let your imagination soar
- 10.2.3 Shoot for quantity
- 10.2.4 Mutate and combine ideas
-
10.3 Second Part of the Brainstorm
- 10.3.1 Voting with a threshold
- 10.3.2 Voting with campaign speeches
- 10.3.3 Blending ideas
- 10.3.4 Applying criteria
- 10.3.5 Scoring or ranking systems
- 10.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 10.5 Summary
-
Chapter 11. Right-Brain Methods
-
11.1 Mapping Tools
- 11.1.1 Sketching
- 11.1.2 Sketching Wiggle Charts
- 11.2 Braindrawing
- 11.3 Right-braining
- 11.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 11.5 Summary
-
11.1 Mapping Tools
-
Chapter 12. The Project’s Name
- 12.1 Working Titles, Nicknames, and Official Names
-
12.2 The Influence of Names
- 12.2.1 A naming demonstration
- 12.2.2 What naming accomplishes
- 12.3 The Naming Heuristic
- 12.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 12.5 Summary
-
Chapter 13. Facilitating in the Face of Conflict
-
13.1 Handling Inessential Conflicts
- 13.1.1 Wrong time, wrong project
- 13.1.2 Personality clashes
- 13.1.3 Indispensable people
- 13.1.4 Intergroup prejudice
- 13.1.5 Level differences
- 13.2 The Art of Being Fully Present
-
13.3 Handling Essential Conflicts
- 13.3.1 Reframing personality differences
- 13.3.2 Negotiating
- 13.3.3 Handling political conflicts
- 13.4 Helpful Hints and Variations
- 13.5 Summary
-
13.1 Handling Inessential Conflicts
- Chapter of References
- Bibliography
- Further Reading
- Acknowledgments
Other books by this author
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.
We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earnedover $12 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
