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Tony,
I like what you said about Agile: "not firm - but don't waste time". I don't think there is anything unwavering either.
Are "just good enough" requirements or essentials something we also call "high level" requirements, which just define a good functional scope for the project? My understanding is no matter what kind of documents you produce, (even no detail requirements or functional specs,) or what responsibles or tile you have, from the whole project perspective somebody still needs to get and define the details before releasing. My question is when? and who should do it?
Irene
All,
Irene:
There is a world of difference between essential requirements and "just good enough" requirements. The former are specific and concrete, the latter are non-specific and vague.
The BA should stick to the essential (i.e., independent of implementation considerations). Development staff should handle the implementation specific requirements. Having said that, the majorirty of BA's actually are very implemntaion oriented. So there is the way things should be, and the way things really are - two different things.
Tony
"
K:
The majority of times DFD are misused resulting in a big waste of time. However, properly utilized, and especially for larger scale efforts, DFDing can be much more efficient and effective than the UML or BPMN. I once worked on a large-scale federal government project that had spent over $150M in analysis - just analysis - and still lacked an adequate understanding of scope. They were trying to use UML artifacts and because the UML is only for smallish efforts, they had no real idea of what the big picture was. The Congressional Budget Office was going to kill the project unless someone could tell them what the extent of the project was. I came late onto the project. It took me only a couple of weeks to create and verify an adequate scope statement using DFDs.
What is essential in requirements specification? As a process is defined by inputs and outputs, identification of inputs to a process and outputs from it is essential. Essential - not "kind of a nice thing to do".
Would you fancy doing a paper for this site on how to get to an essential DFD?
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