The 6 Most Important Requirements Practices
The TL;DR for a 640-page book on software requirements.
Authors sometimes make things longer and more complicated than necessary. Some readers might feel that I’ve been guilty of this myself. The third edition of my book Software Requirements, co-authored with Joy Beatty, is about 245,000 words long, nearly 640 pages in a rather small font. Maybe that seems like overkill, but to be fair, the requirements domain is large and complex.
Books like Software Requirements, Mastering the Requirements Process by Suzanne and James Robertson, and the IIBA’s Business Analysis Body of Knowledge describe dozens of valuable techniques for requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, and management. They’re all useful when thoughtfully applied in appropriate situations. But if you don’t have time to wade through these large volumes, you might like this TL;DR version of the six most important requirements practices that every project team should perform (plus the sequels describing six more practices, four additional practices, and a final set of four practices). This article is adapted from Software Requirements Essentials: Core Practices for Successful Business Analysis by Karl Wiegers and Candase Hokanson.
