Good Requirements Specification How to Obtain It

8/2/2019 Good Requirements Specification How to Obtain It

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Mohammad Zaid http://iso-qms.blogspot.com/

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Good Requirements Specification - How to obtain it?

Here are some excellent practices for obtaining goodrequirements:

Define your goal clearly at the start. Are you seeking to define a new product?

Are you seeking to learn about what your customers do and don t l ike about your current

product? Are you seeking to compare customer opinions of your product or service and

your compet it ors ? Are you seeking to determine what specif ic changes to your product or

service the customers most want?

Make it int eract ive. We learn more by letting customers try out or taste or play with a

sample or prototype than we do by asking questions. We want the customers focused on

the product, not on us. If a prototype or sample isn t possible, then we should use

pictures, charts, and diagrams.

Record everything. If possible, videotape or audiotape the sessions. If not, have two

note takers so you lose as little as possible.

Use indust ry best pract ices, such as focus groups and structure requirements elicitationmethods.

Learn and use good survey design. Good surveys are harder to make than you would

think. McGraw-Hil l s Business Statistics Demyst if ied is a great place to start .

Study your result s. Don t j ust gather a lot of data and ignore it . Put it all t ogether and

learn what you need to know. Quality Management Demystified will help with many

analyt ic t ools, t he most important of which is plan, do, check, act (PDCA).

Check and test your r esult s. If you have a limit ed set of customers, or customer

representatives (such as a market ing depart ment), have them check and improve what you

come up with from the sessions before it goes final. Otherwise, use multiple methods,

such as a survey, a focus group, and a limited pilot product launch before you go into full

production.

Af ter elicit ing requirement s, we wil l need t o organize t hem into a clear, useful

requirement s specif icat ion. The best descript ion for what makes a good requirements

document is f rom the Inst i t ute of Elect ri cal and Elect ronic Engineers, in t heir Standard
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830-1993, IEEE Recommended Pract ice for Software Requirements Specif ications,

summarized here in Table:

Some Characteristics of a Good Requirements SpecificationAdapted f rom IEEE standard 830-1993 and Creat ing a Software Engineering Cultureby Karl E. Wiegers

Characteristic Description

Complete Nothing is missing; all att ributes relevant to customer satisfactionare included, defined, and given tolerances.

Consistent The specif icat ion contains no int ernal contradict ions.

Correct The specifi cation accurately ref lects customers andstakeholders wants and needs.

Feasible Delivering to the specif icat ion is possible with technology that is

available, can be obtained, or can be developed. Delivering tothe specification is possible within time, cost, and otherconstraints.

Modif iable The specif icat ion is designed so that future changes can be madein a defined, practical, traceable way.

Necessary Each requirement adds value for the customer.

Priori t ized Requirements are ranked as to how essential it is to include eachin the book. A group at the top may be listed as required, andthen optional ones listed below that, in priority order.

Testable Each requirement must be defined in a way that wil l allow forone or more tests of either process or product that wil l ensure

conformance and detect error.Traceable Each element is uniquely ident if ied so that it s origin and purpose

can be traced to ensure that it is necessary, appropriate, andaccurate. This usually means assigning a number or code t o eachrequirement that doesn t change, and then adding codes toindicate changes to a requirement and giving each newrequirement its own code or number.

Unambiguous Each requirement has only one possible int erpretation.

For Article on Quality visit my bloghttp://iso-qms.blogspot.com/

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Good Requirements Specification How to Obtain It