System Requirements BTS530

Key Success Criteria for Projects “User” involvement You have at least two—client and professor Clear business objectives Minimized scope Firm basic requirements Standards Starting with the requirements document Small milestones Iterative development

User/Client involvement At each step/deliverable: “is this what you wanted?”; “what’s missing?” End-User Prototypes! “does this work for you?”; “what would make it better?” CAUTION: Prevent scope creep; need scope change control

Clear Business Objectives What is the client hoping to achieve with your system? “increase online sales by 2%” “capture dream data to help “dreamers” can improve the lucidity of their dreams” “provide an online platform that allows clients to give feedback on project deliverables” “provide a tool that allows individual collectors to store and share data about the details of their collections” And so on….

Clear Business Objectives cont’d Business Rules Affect your design and code Without these you don’t understand the business

Minimized Scope “Big bang” does not work. Triple constraint: Scope / Time / Cost. Increase scope—time/cost will increase Smaller, “tighter” scope is easier to manage and more likely to be implemented

Firm Basic Requirements Changes are a fact of project life and must be taken into account in every project Change management BUT the basic functionality / business rules of your system should be fairly established – if you keep changing “how you do things” you will run out of time and deliver something that is not a success

Standards Standards help ensure understanding Templates: Help ensure “correctness”; quality; success Templates: Allow people looking at the design to know what to expect When requirements are hard to read....they become difficult to understand! You may have a great design but if people do not understand it, your design will be perceived as anything BUT great

Small Milestones Iterate through small deliverables so that you can get feedback, check quality, etc. “Big Bang” does not work This includes requirements

What this means to you right now Go back to the client—business rules? Scope? Talk to the professor— scope? Understand ALL scenarios for each us case Learn the requirements template and how to use it Review how to draw/describe use cases and scenarios Deliver “small draft deliverables” to professor for feedback