Effective Requirements Practices

More than 25% of all software projects still fail outright -- costing organizations billions of dollars. One key reason: a failure to effectively define project requirements. In this book, leading enterprise software project manager Ralph Young brings together today's best techniques for gathering requirements, presenting solutions for every project role and stakeholder -- technical and business. Young demonstrates how to identify initial requirements, prioritize and specify requirements, iterate specifications to achieve greater clarity; identify the best ways each requirement can be met; and verify and validate requirements prior to coding. He offers proven techniques for establishing positive partnerships and effective communication with business managers, technical professionals, and software users; handling changes that occur during the course of a project; maintaining a project's momentum in the face of corporate politics and other obstacles; and much more. The book includes comprehensive templates that can be used to improve existing software requirements processes -- or to establish entirely new processes. For all project stakeholders: IT executives, project managers, software engineers, application developers, testers, quality specialists, integrators, even software consumers.