Software Requirements Review of five cases and nine recommendations

Software requirements are the most important input of software development, demand risk is often the biggest risk in software development process, one of the most important means to reduce demand risk is demand review, but demand review is the most difficult one in all assessment activities and one of the most easily overlooked. The author has experienced the following several failed needs review:

Case A

Expert A in a field to do the evaluation of the user requirement report for the cost management system of an enterprise, at the beginning of the review will not be long, a company in the presence of a deputy Vice President B interrupted, that Mr. A proposed the proposal is not suitable for the enterprise, Mr. A proposed management improvement program in the enterprise can not be implemented. After the deputy's comments, the participants in the audience followed Mr. B's objections, resulting in the review will no longer go on, and eventually the report was rejected by the user.

Case Two

A software company holds a product demand review meeting, mainly within the company's relevant field of experts to participate in the review will soon after the start of a field of experts on the need to report on a specific issue of their own different views, so the participants have expressed their views on this issue, we are not arguing, the result, The meeting was in disarray and the moderator was out of control, and the meeting went far beyond the planned review time.

Case Three

A software company makes a demand review for a business process management system for a company A, and when team members read up to hundreds of pages of demand reports at the meeting, the user makes it clear that the meeting has to be done at a certain time.

Case Four

After a software company has finished the demand review meeting of the Material management system, the participants shook their heads as they left the meeting room, thinking that the meeting had not had much practical effect and was completely in the motions.

Case Five

When a software company holds a product demand review within the company, there is a big difference between the author of the demand report and the main planner of the product planning, which makes it unnecessary for the needs review to continue.

The above phenomenon can be seen in many projects. To sum up, the common problems in the requirements review are:

◇ Demand report is very long, in a short time the reviewers simply can not read the requirements report, think clearly;

◇ do not make good preparation work, the efficiency of demand assessment is very low;

◇ The rhythm of demand review cannot be controlled;

◇ Unable to find qualified assessors, the participants can not ask the reviewers of in-depth questions;

......

So how do you do the needs assessment?

Recommendation One: Hierarchical review

We know that the needs of users can be layered, in general can be divided into the following levels:

Target demand: Defines the goals that the whole system needs to achieve;

Functional Requirements: Defines the tasks that the entire system must accomplish;

Operational requirements: Defines the specific human-computer interaction that completes each task;

The target demand is the enterprise's senior management's attention, the functional demand is the enterprise's middle-level management personnel's concern, the operational demand is the enterprise's concrete operator's attention. For different levels of demand, its description of the form is different, participation in the review of the staff is also a difference. If the specific operators to review the target demand, may easily lead to "penny Wise, lost watermelon" phenomenon, if the senior managers also to review those operational requirements, is undoubtedly a waste of resources or will appear case three cases.