Some executives or some leaders who have the ideas sometimes are not very interested in detailing the requirements. I don't recommend clairvoyance and telepathy, although on some projects that does seem to be the technical foundation, it doesn't work very well. And so I think it's fine to have people who have visions of a product, a solution that's going to hopefully meet some need. But we do have to get down to detail. Somebody has to answer those questions. So I'm a big fan of doing some root cause analysis to make sure we understand the problem first and then make sure we can address the correct problem.
“The goal of requirements development is clear and effective communication. Thus, it has to be done in an incremental and iterative fashion."
Karl Wiegers is the coauthor of “Software Requirements Essentials” and has previously appeared in our episode #103. In this episode, we discussed 6 essential practices for software requirements out of the 20 core practices specified in his book. Karl also explained the importance of having a clear and effective communication in developing software requirements, his view on doing software requirements for Agile teams, and the importance of having good software requirements for becoming an effective software development team and for avoiding unnecessary rework.
Listen out for:
- What Karl is Up To Lately - [00:04:08]
- Writing “Software Requirements Essentials” - [00:05:20]
- Software Requirements - [00:10:19]
- Clear & Effective Communication - [00:13:20]
- Importance of Requirement Details - [00:16:19]
- Practice #1 - Understand the Problem Before Converging on a Solution - [00:22:05]
- Practice #3 - Define the Solution’s Boundaries - [00:26:26]
- Requirements Elicitation vs Requirements Gathering - [00:30:47]
- Practice #6 - Understand What Users Need to Do With the Solution - [00:33:01]
- Software Requirements in Agile - [00:37:06]
- Requirements & Effective Software Development - [00:40:59]
- Rework - [00:44:39]
- Practice #19 - Establish and Manage Requirement Baselines - [00:46:20]
- Practice #13 - Prioritize the Requirements - [00:49:17]
- Practice #20 - Manage Changes to Requirements Effectively - [00:52:22]
- 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:54]
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Karl Wiegers’s Bio
Karl Wiegers is Principal Consultant with Process Impact. He has a PhD in organic chemistry. Karl is the author of 14 books, including Software Requirements Essentials (with Candase Hokanson), Software Requirements (with Joy Beatty), Software Development Pearls, The Thoughtless Design of Everyday Things, Successful Business Analysis Consulting, and a forensic mystery novel titled The Reconstruction. Karl has delivered more than 650 training courses, webinars, and conference presentations worldwide. You can reach him at ProcessImpact.com or KarlWiegers.com, where you can also hear more than 50 songs he has recorded just for fun, including 18 originals that he wrote.
Follow Karl:
- LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/karlwiegers
- Website – karlwiegers.com
- Software Requirements Essentials – softwarereqs.com
- Process Impact – processimpact.com
- Medium – karlwiegers.medium.com
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