05 | Define End Value for the Software Iteration Steven Borg | Co-founder & Strategist, Northwest Cadence Anthony Borton | ALM Consultant, Enhance ALM

Elicit requirements Estimate requirements Document requirements Prioritize requirements Module Overview

Microsoft Virtual Academy Elicit requirements

What the Study Guide says… Elicit requirements. –defining project requirements –reviewing and clarifying requirements –defining acceptance criteria –defining UI platform requirements (Web, mobile) –assigning a business value

DEMO Microsoft Virtual Academy Documenting lightweight requirements

Microsoft Virtual Academy Estimate requirements

What the Study Guide says… Estimate requirements. –managing and assigning effort estimates (assigning story points) –resizing user requirements into smaller, manageable pieces –executing task breakdown –estimating the requirements baseline

Story Points Story points are an arbitrary measure of the effort required to implement a story. –It is the team’s estimate of how hard the story is. –Team specific. Doesn’t translate between teams well. –Generally not related to days, or tied to other time based intervals. –Often uses a rounded Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40) In Scrum, story points are often used to by the Team to measure the effort required for a product backlog item –Sprint velocity is based on story points Estimated in a number of ways, including planning poker In simple terms its a number that tells the team how hard the story is. Hard could be related to complexity, Unknowns and effort.

Resizing requirements In order to deliver value continuously and receive rapid feedback, requirements must be sufficiently small. Think: Smallest possible item that provides business value –Business value could be customer value, reduced risk, validated learning, revenue or other key metric. Thoughts: –Generally not everything in a 200 page requirements document is required. –Small requirements that can be shipped independently allow completely new ways of working

DEMO Microsoft Virtual Academy Decomposing requirements in TFS 2012

Microsoft Virtual Academy Document requirements

What the Study Guide says… Document requirements. –defining acceptance criteria –listing requirements –adding requirement details –designing UI storyboards

DEMO Microsoft Virtual Academy Documenting requirements in TFS 2012

DEMO Microsoft Virtual Academy Extending PowerPoint Storyboards

Microsoft Virtual Academy Prioritize requirements

What the Study Guide says… Prioritize requirements. –identifying requirements that are critical path –identifying must-have requirements –enabling the entire team (including customers) to participate in requirements prioritization –identifying dependencies

Identifying must-have requirements Ensure anything designated as must-have truly must be had in order to meet a “minimally viable product” –My experience: about 75% of most “must have” requirements generally aren’t actually required to deliver customer value or achieve validated learning Several tools exist for classifying requirements: –MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Would like) Regardless of tool, hardest part is ruthlessly reducing the batch size of delivered code to the truly “must have” requirements

Critical Path The critical path is the longest necessary path through a network of activities when respecting their interdependencies –Work breakdown structure (list of all activities) –Time estimate for each activity –Dependencies between activities TFS does not calculate a critical path. MS Project does. MS Project can sync with TFS –fidelity depends on the field mapping file in the process template –

DEMO Microsoft Virtual Academy Using MS Project with TFS

Although the prep guide seems to stress formal requirements management, keep a lean and agile mindset for test success. –Scrum intro earlier in the day still applies strongly to this section Many ways to prioritize requirements –In Scrum, prioritization is done by the Product Owner Understand, however, the strengths MS Project brings if a critical path must be identified, or predecessor/successor relationships need to be defined.

©2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Office, Azure, System Center, Dynamics and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.