Mastering Software Project Requirements: A Framework for Successful Planning, Development & Alignment

This book is a concise step-by-step guide to building and establishing the frameworks and models for the effective management and development of software requirements. It describes what great requirements must look like and who the real audience is for documentation. It then explains how to generate consistent, complete, and accurate requirements in exacting detail following a simple formula across the full life cycle from vague concept to detailed design-ready specifications.

Mastering Software Project Requirements will enable business analysts and project managers to decompose high-level solutions into granular requirements and to elevate their performance through due diligence and the use of better techniques to meet the particular needs of a given project without sacrificing quality, scope, or project schedules.

Key Features

• Identifies the attributes of good requirements and illustrates the life cycle from elicitation to analysis, specification to validation, explaining how to estimate, measure, benchmark, plan, manage, and deliver great software project requirements
• Presents a solid and reproducible framework for generating great requirements within the parameters of a specific project or enterprise architecture methodology and in projects that are agnostic of methodology
• Explains how various methodologies impact the results of requirements activities and provides strategies for adapting and aligning requirements activities to project frameworks and corresponding methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, WAgile, TOGAF and DO-178) to ensure the integrity of the requirements is maintained across multiple project frameworks
• Covers every shred of requirements documentation that a business analyst or project manager will consume and produce, as well as the context and audience of each artifact and deliverable created
• Re-defines the requirements process in pragmatic detail, and enables technology and business organizations to: reduce operating costs, increase alignment between technology products and business needs, and maximize return on investment of every implemented business solution by providing detailed task descriptions, key performance indicators, and benefits realization planning

About the Author

Davis is President of RQX Global Training & Consulting, LLC, an organization that provides technology management and profit management solutions for projects, resources, portfolios, and IT services. Mrs. Davis is a proven thought leader and expert in business analysis, project management, and various aspects of IT management and business. She has been a champion of business analysis and technology standards and infrastructure for the past 13 years, during which time she developed the world’s first university accredited business analysis diploma program, proprietary resource maturity and requirements methodologies, and a global online business analysis training program.

Prior to entering the technology field, Barbara gained more than 15 years of functional business experience in operational management, project management, change management, and training. She currently works with Fortune 500 companies to align business analysis services, critical projects, and operational infrastructure to ensure successful outcomes in the face of conflict and very challenging circumstances. Davis is also an international speaker and author of Managing Business Analysis Services: A Framework for Sustainable Projects and Corporate Success (2012).