In the previous article in this series, I described several conditions in which writing less detailed requirements is appropriate. However, there are several situations in which recording only high-level requirements information increases the project’s risk. When you encounter situations such as the ones described in this article (adapted from my book More about Software Requirements), expect to spend more time than average developing detailed requirements specifications.

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In the first article in this series, I pointed out that there’s no easy answer to the question of how detailed the requirements need to be. Instead, I can present a thought process the business analyst can use to assess the appropriate level of detail for each case.

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Recently I was chatting at a wine tasting event with a couple of lawyers, who I had just met. One was surprisingly inquisitive about my work in the software requirements arena. Apparently she was working on case involving software at that very time. At one point she asked me, “How do you know how detailed to make the requirements?” It’s an insightful question, one that even experienced business analysts often ask me.

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This session provides attendees with hands on techniques for determining the outcome of their projects before the project really gets rolling. This session is about facts, and presents extensive research from IAG’s new Business Analysis Benchmark Study to help business analysts and project managers build a predictive risk assessment model. This session puts the intake and requirements gathering process of the project lifecycle under the microscope to determine what actions Business Analysts and Project Managers can take to more consistently achieve a successful outcome on their projects.

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 Why should it take months to determine project scope and gather requirements? Register now to look at the underlying problems that impede the collection of business requirements and make projects less successful.

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 Managing Requirements Operational Excellence is about making significant change in requirements discovery and management performance.
This session is for the business analyst leadership and development executive looking to make long term, systematic improvement to their business analyst organization.

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Given the economic downturn, "cheaper, better, faster" seems to be a universal mantra in business. To stay competitive, organizations must continually strive to be more agile and develop higher-quality solutions more quickly-despite obstacles such as geographically distributed teams, limited budgets and resources, quick delivery times, language barriers and government regulations. These challenges require teams to consider new ways of doing business so they can be more responsive to frequent business changes.

One area that businesses can optimize is their software development processes. If they want to be competitive, companies don't have the luxury of long development lifecycles. To keep timeframes short, organizations must foster a collaborative environment by making tasks and responsibilities transparent and breaking down silos across the development lifecycle.

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The requirements you capture must be stated in business terms, must be clearly stated, must be concise, and must be feasible. To ensure that requirements are clearly stated, you should have them proof read by someone external to the project (or at least someone not familiar with the requirements you've captured).

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A company with poor requirements practices is just asking for over-budget costs and regular failure, according to a new report by IAG Consulting. The report, entitled Business Analysis Benchmark, examined 110 enterprise technology projects at 100 companies to determine just how important project requirements really are.

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Agile development practices introduced, adopted and extended the XP-originated "User Story" as the primary currency for expressing application requirements within the agile enterprise. The just-in-time application of the user story simplified software development and eliminated the prior waterfall like practices of overly burdensome and overly constraining requirements specifications for agile teams.

However, as powerful as this innovative concept is, the user story by itself does not provide an adequate, nor sufficiently lean, construct for reasoning about investment, system-level requirements and acceptance testing across the larger software enterprises project team, program and portfolio organizational levels.

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