Part 2: Requirements Days 7, 9, 11, 13 Chapter 2: How to Gather Requirements: Some Techniques to Use Chapter 3: Finding Out about the Users and the Domain Chapter 4: Finding Out about Tasks and Work Chapter 5: Requirements Gathering: Knowledge of the User Interface Design Chapter 6: Thinking about Requirements and Describing Them Chapter 7: Case Study on Requirements, Part 1 Video: Paper Prototyping

Gathering requirements What, how, and why? What: To understand as much as possible about the users, tasks, and context in order to produce a stable set of requirements How: The more ways the better to a point Why: Requirements Engineering is the phase in software development where failure most commonly occurs and is most costly

Why is this important? Top 3 reasons why projects delivered late, over budget, with less functionality than planned, or cancelled: 3.

Why is this important? $$$ Cost to fix a requirements based problem

Data Gathering Techniques Observing your Users –Direct Observation –Indirect Observation: Video Recording Interviews –Structured –Unstructured (flexible) Questionnaires and Surveys Focus Groups Study Documentation Formal controlled studies

Some basic guidelines Focus on identifying the stakeholders’ needs Involve all the stakeholder groups Involve more than one representative from each stakeholder group Use a combination of data gathering techniques Support the process with props such as prototypes and task descriptions Run a pilot session