How do you go about the requirements gathering phase? Does anyone have a good set of guidelines or tips to follow? What are some good questions to ask the stakeholders? I am currently working on a new project and there are a lot of unknowns. I am in the process of coming up with a list of questions to ask the stakeholders. However I ca...
When you need to refine requirements from your customer or customer representative, what techniques have worked best for you? By best, I mean what techniques have ultimately resulted in delivering the right product and keeping the relationship positive. ---Background--- Our customer representative group elicits requirements from our sys...
Hi I'm writing a small app for my friend's business, and thought I'd take the opportunity to brush up on some Agile Project Management training I did at the start of the year. I (and I think, my current organisation!) have always struggled with gathering requirements in the form of User Stories, which take the form: As a [User Type] I...
We want to standardize the way we are starting projects. Most of the company is running off Agile but we want to have common bases. An exemple would be to customize the "Process Template" inside TFS and add our own work items with our own workflow for specific task/request coming from the client. We would also love a better way to gat...
It’s been only recently that I have been responsible for requirement gathering and I am quite overwhelmed by my inability to capture ALL requirements. At the end of a release requirements slip and I am, to say the least quite annoyed with me. In the upcoming release I seem to be going crazy. I have one too many questions that I would li...
I've just had a new project land on my desk which is more than a little bit beyond me, so I'll be delegating it to a colleague. However, I don't want to be the nightmare user with the forever changing specs; so what is my best way to plan and spec out the application that needs to be developed? Are there template spec documents out ther...
I'm engaged in a project with a customer that requires MOSS to be installed for Internet and Intranet. Unfortunately the client does not know what he wants. Is there a systematic appraoch usually used to gather MOSS requirement such as a set of questions usually business analysts ask to clear the direction and to manage the scope. Is the...
When having discussions with superiors and other technical co-workers it is always a good idea to remind them to think about the "what" instead of the "how" when gathering requirements for a new software project. This in itself can be quite a challenge especially when you're dealing with technical folk. Being part of a team of programm...
Hi all, After serveral years developement, I believe that there is no SIMPLE application in the world, though Clients often say "I have a simple requirement". There are too many things to think and to do in a software development. So I start thinking the following question: What features should an application natually have, or at leas...
Has anyone tried gathered requirements by conducting a Deep Dive Session with Business Users? How do these sessions work? Was it productive and a good way to gather requirements? Are there any issues this? From what I understand so far, in these sessions you ask the business users to define parts of the system and how it should work fro...
Is it possible to use TFS 2008/VS 2008 to gather requirements and create the (top level) work items for the solution? Current our BAs use Visio and Word to scope our requirements so there is no formal UML type user story/case based design though I am looking to implement something like this. Our solutions mainly use the following techno...
I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall sometimes. I was just talking to someone in my company about the need to encourage our [company's internal] client to put thought into their requirements up front and make a bigger effort to ensure that they're fixed before providing them to my development team to start on. The argum...
Is there an appropriate term for a requirements-gathering methodology where requirements are gathered as contrived by developers while the system is being developed, as opposed to the usual / normal / healthy process (where requirements are gathered from actual stakeholders). Put another way, what is it called when a requirements team r...
Sorry for lengthy question. I can't tell if this should be a programming question or a project management question. Any advice will help. I inherited a reasonably large web project (1 year old) from a solo freelancer who architected it then abandoned it. The project was a mess, but I cleaned up what I could, and now the system is mor...
I am conducting a research on recent techniques of (software )requirement elicitaion used by practitioners ? a) Interviews b) Surveys c) Questioneers d) Storyboards e) Other??? please specify lil descrition too and how does these techniques vary from projct to project? ...
When I think about software requirements, the first thing that springs to my mind is a group requesting an application with x number of features and functionalities, while the requirements analyst(s) try to organize this influx of ideas, miscommunications, etc. into a stable and non-contradictory system. How does this apply to game deve...
I'm due to be involved in a project where I will be responsible for the initial requirements capture from customers. I haven't done this kind of task before so am looking for a few pointers. Can anyone recommend any good books on this subject that in your experience have been invaluable? Thanks ...
As with most developers, struggling with poor, vague, incomplete, and not thought out requirements. I know most people feel developers should pull double-duty and help with business analysis, but if you have large number of individual projects, it's hard to be a 'business subject matter expert' for all of them. So, here is my question ...
What kind of tools are used by product management folks to capture user interface layouts (includes detailed information on all elements within a screen) for various screens in a web2.0 product. We have used Visio in the past, but are there any other tools to capture this information? ...
This is my first time and I am not really sure what I should be probing for or emphasizing on in the requirement gathering phase. The project is to build a content management system. What should the outcome of the requirement gathering phase ideally be? I mean, should I arrive at requirement specification document or would this phase al...