Comments on: Understanding requirements engineering http://blog.jaoo.dk/2008/12/01/understanding-requirements-engineering/ For developers - by developers Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:58:52 +0200 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Marcelo Emmerich http://blog.jaoo.dk/2008/12/01/understanding-requirements-engineering/comment-page-1/#comment-3053 Marcelo Emmerich Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:27:03 +0000 http://blog.jaoo.dk/?p=290#comment-3053 Here is my approach for getting the process of gathering requirements started. It has been proved to work well in a number of smaller projects with high dynamics and unexperienced customers. Have the customer verbally describe the solution to be built. Write down all (relevant) verbs, nouns and adjectives. Ask w-questions in between to mitigate ambiguities, for example, the customer might start using synonyms for one and the same thing ("What is the difference between a shape and an object on the screen?"). Also, use the w-questions to formalize ("what does fast actually mean in the context of drawing a shape on the screen?"). After this exercise you will end up having an initial view on a) the scope of the solution, b) the domain vocabulary to be used and c) a starting point for creating functional use cases. Marcelo Here is my approach for getting the process of gathering requirements started. It has been proved to work well in a number of smaller projects with high dynamics and unexperienced customers.

Have the customer verbally describe the solution to be built. Write down all (relevant) verbs, nouns and adjectives. Ask w-questions in between to mitigate ambiguities, for example, the customer might start using synonyms for one and the same thing (”What is the difference between a shape and an object on the screen?”). Also, use the w-questions to formalize (”what does fast actually mean in the context of drawing a shape on the screen?”). After this exercise you will end up having an initial view on a) the scope of the solution, b) the domain vocabulary to be used and c) a starting point for creating functional use cases.

Marcelo

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