Requirements Inception

• The goal is to establish a shared understanding of the context of the product, thereby defining its underlying problem, proposed solution, its boundaries, and benefit
• The result is documented into a vision and scope document

1. Business requirements
2. Scope and limitations
3. Business context

• A project without a clearly defined and well-communicated direction invites disaster
  • Work based on unaligned objective
  • Stakeholders won’t agree on requirements
  • Deadlines missed and budgets overrun

• Describe the primary benefits that the new system will provide to its sponsors, buyers, and users.
• Directly influence which user requirements to implement and in what sequence.
• Sources
  • Fundig sponsors
    • Marketing managers
  • Corporate executives
    • Product visionaries

• Problems and objectives are intertwined: understanding one can reveal the other.
• Given a set of business objectives, ask:
  • What is keeping us from reaching this goal?
  • Why do we care about that goal?
  • How will we assess the problem is solved?

• Our ecommerce site is not profitable
  • Why is it not profitable?
  • Poor site design?
  • Bad pricing?
  • Poor customer management after the sale?
  • Some or all of the above?
• working backward to better understand the top-level business problem or opportunity.
• Given a business problem, ask to identify the measurable objective.
• The proecess is iterative – go on exploring through the problems and objectives until a list of features emerges.

Product Vision

VS.

Project Scope

• Succinctly describes the ultimate
  • Identifies what portion of the product that will achieve the business ultimate project the current project objectives. will address.
• Applies to the product as a whole.
  • Pertains to a specific project or iteration, and hence is more dynamic.

• You need to state both what the solution being developed is and what it is not.
• Scope creep: continuous or uncontrolled growth in project scope as more and more functionality gets stuffed into the product. Definition of creep verb a: to move along with the body prone and close to the ground // A spider was creeping along the bathroom floor. b: to enter or advance gradually so as to be almost unnoticed // Age creeps up on us.

• The purpose to is foster clear and accurate communication of scope among stakeholders
• It is important to follow a notation standard to achieve this goal
• Techniques:
  • Context Diagrams
    • Feature trees
  • Exosystem maps
    • Event lists

• Visually illustrates the boundary between the system being developed and everything else in the universe P
• rovides no visibility into the system’s internal objects, processes, or data
• Identifies external entities (terminators) that connect to the system, as well as data, control and material flows

• Shows all of the systems related to the system being developed and the interactions among them
• Identify those systems by determining which ones consume data from your system or vice versa Context Diagram VS. Ecosystem Maps All types of external entities that Systems that relate to the system directly interface with the system whether directly or indirectly

• Visual depiction of the product’s features organized in logical groups, hierarchically subdividing each feature into further levels of detail
• Can show up to three levels of features, commonly referred to as L1, L2, and L3
• The scope of a specific release consists of a defined set of L1, L2, and/or L3 features chosen from the feature tree

• Identifies external events that could trigger behavior in the system
• Events could be triggered by users, time-triggered, or signal events received from external components
• The functional requirements that describe how the system responds to the events would be detailed in the SRS
• The scope of a release is defined in terms of certain events

Requirements inception in one sentence:

Agree on a well-

defined project’s vision, scope, and business case

just enough investigation to form a rational,

“The idea is to do justifiable opinion of the overall purpose and feasibility of the potential new system, and decide if it is worthwhile to invest in deeper exploration” Craig Larman