Statistics: (2377 Views) (0 Comments) Print Posted: Thursday, September 06, 2007 Categories: Requirements Analysis (BABOK KA), Functional Specifications, Career as a Business Systems Analyst

 Most books and articles on software requirements are written as though you’re gathering requirements for a brand-new product—what’s sometimes called a green-field project. In reality, few people have that opportunity on every project. Many developers work on maintenance projects. In such a project you’re usually adding new features to existing systems, modifying functionality to comply with updated business rules, or building extensions onto commercial packages. Too often, you can’t find anything resembling a requirements specification for the system you’re enhancing. It’s not unusual to have to maintain a system without adequate documentation, with the original developers who held all the critical information in their heads being long gone.

If you’re in such a situation, you might be tempted to reject the requirements literature as irrelevant. Not so! You can apply several useful requirements engineering methods even in these situations—even when you’re squeezing new functionality into an unruly product in a documentation vacuum. The same ideas apply to iterative development projects doing a series of successive releases. Here I’ll describe seven principles to help you deal with requirements issues in such maintenance situations. We’ll also look at ways in which thoughtfully applied requirements development and management practices can help you improve both your product quality and your ability to perform future maintenance.

Author: Karl Wiegers