The elicitation, analysis, specification, verification, and validation of requirements for a software project.
70
votes
14answers
5k views
How should a developer reject impossible requirements?
Here's the problem I'm facing:
Quote From Project Manager:
Hey Spark, I'm assigning you the task of developing a framework that could be used for many different iOS applications. Here are the ...
58
votes
9answers
11k views
What is the difference between requirements and specifications?
I've been tasked with developing requirements and specifications for a project our group is starting.
I realized that I don't know the difference; a Google search just confused me more -- it seems ...
29
votes
9answers
1k views
How to reply to incomplete requests from potential customers?
Working as a freelancer, I receive many weird, invalid or incomplete requests from the actual or potential customers. The most frequent case is this one:
Hi,
I need a website where people can ...
25
votes
6answers
2k views
Is it the job of a developer to suggest IT requirements?
I am the only developer working on a web application which is nearing to its end. Now we are looking into making it Live in maybe a couple of months time.
This is a web application for a non IT ...
23
votes
11answers
480 views
Coaxing requirements out of business people?
What methods seem to work best to coax requirements out of non-tech business people? I am working with a team that’s trying to get a spec together for a project. Every time we have met and it comes ...
19
votes
7answers
771 views
How can a non-technical person learn to write a spec for small projects?
How can a non-technical person learn to write specs for small projects?
A friend of mine is trying to outsource some development on a statistics project.
In particular, he does a lot of work in ...
19
votes
10answers
890 views
What is the proper way to create requirements documents?
Right now my supervisor is creating requirements documentation / specs for me using bugtracking software. This seems like a terrible idea to me, all the requirements are on these little tickets and I ...
19
votes
11answers
2k views
Tools to produce & manage specifications/requirements (not ticket trackers)
I'm interested if there are any websites or software out there to aid in initial project design, and then management of the project's design over time as features are implmented, bugs are found, ...
17
votes
7answers
611 views
Challenges to the Agile approach on government projects
A previous Agile discussion here had good answers specifying what is critical to the success of implementing Agile methodology in software development. Most of the points were the typical ...
16
votes
8answers
369 views
Let users get requirements together on their own or guide them along?
I'm sure everyone has experienced something like this. You go into a meeting with a client who has a project. They have no/few requirements in mind and the vaguest understanding of what they ...
16
votes
8answers
2k views
How do you manage feature requests and software changes?
I am a Software Engineer and over the past few years I have become the de-facto software project manager simply because there isn't one. So to keep our sanity in the R&D/Engineering department, ...
16
votes
12answers
1k views
Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?
I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline ...
15
votes
3answers
457 views
Hardware requirements
How do people define the minimum hardware requirements for software? For example: how can a software development company tell the customer that they will need 8 GB of RAM to run the program properly?
15
votes
1answer
850 views
Freelancers: How Do You Go About Gathering Requirements?
As a freelance programmer:
What is your process for gathering requirements from a client?
How much time does the requirement gathering process take you? I know this is not fixed, and there are ...
14
votes
5answers
13k views
Functional or non-functional requirement?
I'm wondering about functional or non-functional requirements. I have found lot of different definitions for those terms and I can't assign some of my requirement to proper category.
I'm wondering ...
14
votes
5answers
1k views
How are minimum system requirements determined?
We've all seen countless examples of software that ships with "minimum system requirements" like the following:
Windows XP/Vista/7
1GB RAM
200 MB Storage
How are these generally determined? ...
13
votes
14answers
1k views
Ideal Operating System [closed]
Okay. So I'm currently trying to design an operating system, but I need ideas. Nevermind the feasibility right now, it's just in the design phase. If you had an OS that did whatever you wanted, what ...
13
votes
7answers
825 views
What is the best practice for gathering requirements when a customer does not know what he wants? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How do you deal with changing requirements?
This question must have been asked a thousand times but there seems to be little progress in this area:
I have asked the ...
12
votes
8answers
487 views
What to do if boss always postpones major decisions about requirements and overall design?
When starting a new project, my boss always avoids to make fixed decisions. He is usually saying: ok, just start to write something and be as generic as possible. When you're finished we look how we ...
12
votes
2answers
1k views
What standard superseded 830-1998?
I have been looking into how to document software projects more formally, and I have learned about IEEE 830-1998: Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specifications. However, as you can ...
12
votes
4answers
678 views
How much detail about a user story can a developer expect?
The biggest drawback of agile development I have experienced is that people not involved in development focus on the mantra that a user story (3-10 ideal person days) should not contain more than 1-3 ...
11
votes
8answers
487 views
Should a programmer “think” for the client?
I have gotten to the point where I hate requirements gathering. Customer's are too vague for their own good. In an agile environment, where we can show the client a piece of work to completion it's ...
11
votes
5answers
3k views
Writing a Software Requirement Specification
I have a few questions about writing a specification and they are:
When we write a software specification, under the topic "User requirements definition" we have to specify the "Functions" and ...
11
votes
6answers
699 views
How to deal with customers who don't understand the complexity of their requests? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Explaining technical things to non-technical people
Working with stakeholders who don't know the first thing about technology can be interesting. On one hand, I ...
10
votes
15answers
1k views
Better word for Optional Requirements?
What's a better word for an optional requirement in software engineering? The phrase is contradictory. I've used "Non-Core Requirements" in previous projects.
10
votes
4answers
1k views
Tool to manage requirements throughout a software development lifecycle [closed]
I am looking for a tool to manage requirements or features for a software development project. It will be used by a small geographically diverse team of 5-10 people to raise, discuss and track ...
9
votes
5answers
814 views
Is it a good idea to write requirements specifications by stories?
We're using agile methods in my current project at the moment, and we have heaps of stories like these:
As an assistant, I want to pay a customer a refund so that they can
get some money when they ...
9
votes
4answers
192 views
Is it a good idea to measure the performance of a method by using unit test timeout?
In a project where there are non-functional requirements which specify the maximum execution time for a specific action, QA must check the performance of this action on a dedicated machine using ...
8
votes
5answers
433 views
Agile,Waterfall and requirement changes
Has anyone had this issue of a project defined as 'Agile' being overrun by requirement changes ? I work on a development project which is run in 4 weeks Sprint but there are always changes in between ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views
Feature vs. Function
Often I hear PMs (Project Managers) talk about feature and function. And I'm just so puzzled to differentiate them. Sometimes I think of a feature to be equivalent to a user story. Something like "As ...
8
votes
6answers
445 views
Can non-technical staff gather requirements on behalf of the development team?
Working in a large organisation, it is often the case that the members of the development team are not able to get direct access to the client to gather requirements. Is it possible/advisable to give ...
8
votes
1answer
220 views
Pair programming business logic with a non-IT person
Have you have any experience in which a non-IT person works with a programmer during the coding process?
It's like pair programming, but one person is a non-IT person that knows a lot about the ...
7
votes
9answers
568 views
Why bother with detailed specs?
When writing software, what's the point of writing a formal, detailed dead-tree specification? To clarify, a somewhat informal, high-level specification for people who don't want to read the code ...
7
votes
11answers
675 views
How to estimate cost with very little information?
I have a client who wants a web app that will let him do the following (as he told me word for word):
User registration
Recurring payments for users
Online conference room reservation
I am ...
7
votes
6answers
336 views
How to improve my trade
I'm currently working as a software developer and studying for a software engineering degree (the former whilst not doing the latter).
I'm confident in my ability to do my job competently, but I feel ...
7
votes
8answers
314 views
Is there any circumstance in which a strict waterfall project can succeed when requirements are not clearly defined?
I can not see how a software project can make any meaningful progress under a waterfall methodology if the requirements cannot be clearly stated from the outset. Am I missing anything?
7
votes
4answers
370 views
To Gather Requirements, from those who don't want to give time for interviewing?
Actually, I'm A Fresh CS graduate,who want to build a System for his Dad's Road Transport business.
However,the issue is whenever I go to ask to him about :
what are people involved in his business?
...
7
votes
5answers
803 views
functional requirements - use wording based on verbs?
Question
Should the functional requirements in a requirements doc use wording based on verbs?
Context
School assignment, working in a team, working through the SDLC. The requirements doc has been ...
7
votes
3answers
378 views
using a wiki for requirements
I'm looking into ways of improving requirements management. Currently, we have a Word document published on a Web site. Unfortunately, we cannot (to my knowledge) look at changes from one revision ...
7
votes
3answers
238 views
How to measure external quality of software
For my thesis, I am doing research into the characteristics of Behavior Driven Development (BDD). One of the BDD claims is that by specifying the requirements in a ubiquitous language together with ...
7
votes
5answers
308 views
Alternatives to *documents* in the SDLC?
Since no one prints anything any more, the concept of actual project documents (meaning, a monolithic piece of formatted text) seems like it could be improved on. Problems with documents are things ...
7
votes
5answers
1k views
Why bother differentiating between functional and nonfunctional requirements?
I understand the difference between the two, but I get questioned by my colleagues of the benefit of labeling requirements as functional or nonfunctional (or transitional). Why bother to do so? He ...
7
votes
3answers
424 views
What FOSS solutions are available to manage software requirements?
In the company where I work, we are starting to plan to be compliant to the software development life cycle. We already have, wiki, vcs system, bug tracking system, and a continuous integration ...
7
votes
4answers
132 views
Where to put details about the acceptance criteria of a user story?
In this blog post about acceptance criteria the author explains that good acceptance criteria should:
State an intent not a solution (e.g. “The user can choose an account”
rather than “The user can ...
6
votes
11answers
1k views
How much storage space do developers really need on work systems?
Not Counting the OS And the requirements to run the Development software. The storage space required.
Strictly speaking from work perspective(company setup and not freelancers).A individual ...
6
votes
8answers
439 views
What are important things to remember when reengineering a legacy application?
About to embark on the initial phases of a project to rewrite a legacy application from the ground up (existing business rules will change somewhat, and be extended to incorporate a large number of ...
6
votes
8answers
2k views
How can I estimate how long a project will take? [duplicate]
I'm working as a web developer and I want to be able to determine if I'm efficient.
Does this include the how long it take to accomplish tasks such as:
Server side code for the site logic with one ...
6
votes
3answers
980 views
How do I convince my team that a requirements specification is unnecessary if we adopt user-stories?
We are planning to adopt user-stories to capture stakeholder 'intent' in a lightweight fashion rather than a heavy SRS (software requirements specifications). However, it seems that though they ...
6
votes
4answers
283 views
Why it is important to include definition of success/failure in specification?
I've read Steve McConnell's "Code Complete" and one of items in checklist for requirements is: "Is the definition of success included? Of failure?".
Why is this important? Can you write any examples ...
6
votes
3answers
618 views
Getting from a user-story to code while using TDD (scrum)
I'm getting into scrum and TDD and I think I have some confusion which I'd like to get your feedback about. Let's assume I have a user-story in my backlog, in order for me to start developing it as ...
