Author Bio
Impact analysis is a key aspect of responsible requirements management. It provides an accurate understanding of the implications of a proposed change, which helps the teams make informed business decisions about which proposals to approve. The analysis examines the proposed change to identify components that might have to be created, modified, or discarded and to […]
How can you distinguish excellent software requirements and software requirements specifications (SRS) from those with problems?
Developers often want to freeze software requirements following some initial work and then proceed with development, unencumbered by those pesky changes. This is the classic waterfall paradigm. It doesn’t work well in most situations.
Business analysts and managers sometimes ask me how long it will take to “do requirements” on their next project.
In the first part of this two-part series I described the value of managing risks formally on a software project and listed numerous common risks in various categories. This article describes the various activities associated with the practice of risk management and recommends specific information you should record about each risk you identify. Risk Management […]
Software engineers are eternal optimists. When planning software projects, we usually assume that everything will go exactly as planned. Or, we take the other extreme position: the creative nature of software development means we can never predict what’s going to happen, so what’s the point of making detailed plans? Both of these perspectives can lead […]
In part one and part two of this series, adapted from my book Practical Project Initiation, I’ve described fifteen practices the project manager can apply to lay the foundation for a successful project, plan the project, and estimate the work to be done. In this final article I share two additional estimation practices, three good practices […]
In Part 1 of this series, adapted from my book Practical Project Initiation, I shared four best practices that can help you lay the foundation for a successful project and two practices that are useful for project planning. This article continues the series by describing additional project planning best practices and several practices for estimating the […]
Managing software projects is difficult under the best circumstances. The project manager must balance competing stakeholder interests against the constraints of limited resources and time, ever-changing technologies, and challenging demands from high-pressure people. Project management is a juggling act, with too many balls in the air at once. Unfortunately, many new project managers receive little […]
[raw] To read the updated version of this article, visit www.jamasoftware.com/blog/defining-project-scope-context-use-case-diagrams/. [/raw] Every software team talks about project scope and team members often complain about unending scope creep. Unfortunately, the software industry lacks uniform definitions of these terms, and the requirements literature is short on clear guidance regarding how to even represent scope. I confront […]