Managing Software Requirements

Learn how to deliver software that meets your clients' needs with the help of a structured, end-to-end methodology for managing software requirements and building suitable systems

Key Features

• Learn how to communicate with a project's stakeholders to elicit software requirements
• Deal every phase of the requirement life cycle with pragmatic methods and techniques
• Manage the software development process and deliver verified requirements using Scrum and Kanban

Book Description

Difficulty in accurately capturing and managing requirements is the most common cause of software project failure. Learning how to analyze and model requirements and produce specifications that are connected to working code is the single most fundamental step that you can take toward project success. This book focuses on a delineated and structured methodology that will help you analyze requirements and write comprehensive, verifiable specifications.

You'll start by learning about the different entities in the requirements domain and how to discover them based on customer input. You'll then explore tried-and-tested methods such as impact mapping and behavior-driven development (BDD), along with new techniques such as D3 and feature-first development. This book takes you through the process of modeling customer requirements as impact maps and writing them as executable specifications. You'll also understand how to organize and prioritize project tasks using Agile frameworks, such as Kanban and Scrum, and verify specifications against the delivered code. Finally, you'll see how to start implementing the requirements management methodology in a real-life scenario.

By the end of this book, you'll be able to model and manage requirements to create executable specifications that will help you deliver successful software projects.

What you will learn

• Kick-start the requirements-gathering and analysis process in your first meeting with the client
• Accurately define system behavior as features
• Model and describe requirement entities using Impact Mapping and BDD
• Create a feature-based product backlog and use it to drive software development
• Write verification code to turn features into executable specifications
• Deliver the right software and respond to change using either Scrum or Kanban
• Choose appropriate software tools to provide transparency and traceability to your clients

Who this book is for

This book is for software engineers, business analysts, product managers, project managers, and software project stakeholders looking to learn a variety of techniques and methodologies for collating accurate software requirements. A fundamental understanding of the software development life cycle (SDLC) is needed to get started with this book. Although not necessary, basic knowledge of the Agile philosophy and practices, such as Scrum, along with some programming experience will help you to get the most out of this book.

Table of Contents

1. The Requirements Domain
2. Impact Mapping and Behavior-Driven Development
3. Writing Fantastic Features with the Gherkin Language
4. Crafting Features using Principles and Patterns
5. Discovering and Analyzing Requirements
6. Organizing Requirements
7. Feature-First development
8. Creating Automated Verification Code
9. The Requirements Life Cycle
10. Use-Case: The Camford University Paper Publishing System

Throughout his career, Fred Heath has worked at every stage of the software development lifecycle, from writing code and designing interfaces to leading projects and dealing with clients. He has worked in a wide variety of industries, such as telecoms, defence and education and has experience in a plethora of programming languages and platforms. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional and Professional ScrumMaster I. Currently he is working on developing software for the Educational sector. This book is the distillation of Fred's 24 years of professional experience, including 11 years of agile development methods.