Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs

I spend much time helping organizations capture requirements and even more time helping them recover from not capturing requirements. Many of them have gone through some motions regarding requirements as if they were sleepworking. Its time to wake up and do it rightand this book is going to be their alarm clock.

In todays complex, fast-paced software development environment, collaborationthe intense peer-to-peer conversations that result in products, decisions, and knowledge sharingis absolutely essential to success. But all too often, attempts to collaborate degenerate into agonizing meetings or ineffectual bull sessions. Ellen's wonderful book will help you bridge the gapturning the agony of meetings into the ecstasy of effective collaboration.

Requirements by Collaboration presents a wealth of practical tools and techniques for facilitating requirements development workshops. It is suitableno, essential readingfor requirements workshop facilitators. It will help both technical people and customer representatives participate in these critical contributions to software success.

The need for this particular book, at this particular time, is crystal clear. We have entered a new age where software development must be viewed as a form of business problem solving. That means direct user participation in developing requirements, or more accurately, in jointly working the business problem. That, in turn, means facilitated sessions. In this book, Ellen Gottesdiener provides a wealth of practical ideas for ensuring that you have exactly the right stuff for this all-important area of professional art.

Gottesdieners years of software development experience coupled with her straight-forward writing style make her book a perfect choice for either a senior developer or a midlevel project manager. In addition to her technical experience, her knowledge of group dynamics balance the book by educating the reader on how to manage conflict and personality differences within a requirements teamsomething that is missing from most requirements textbooks...It is a required handbook that will be referred to again and again.

Requirements by Collaboration is a must read for any system stakeholder. End users and system analysts will learn the significant value they can add to the systems development process. Management will learn the tremendous r...