Team Skill 2 Understanding User and Stakeholder Needs The features of a Product or System (9)

System Features Eventually we will cover all these techniques for eliciting requirements ▫Interviewing and questionnaires ▫Requirements workshops ▫Brainstorming and idea reduction ▫Storyboards ▫Use cases ▫Role playing ▫Prototyping

System Features Success Factors ▫Communication skills of each team member is essential ▫The whole team must actively participate in eliciting requirements ▫Use techniques for eliciting reqs. that are proven successful ▫Limit the number of features in a new system  Depend on many factors  Team Size  Product Size  Release schedule

System Features Steps to requirement definition ▫You never start out with all your requirements defined ▫Follow the process to get to system requirements  Define the users Needs  Derive the Features from their Needs  Derive Software Requirements from the Features ▫Who is responsible for this?

System Features “Needs” ▫“reflection of the business, personal or operational problem (or opportunity) that must be addressed in order to justify consideration, purchase, or use of a new system” ▫Needs are often  Derived from one of the problem statements  They are what will fix the issue  Often used as considerations when to purchasing a new system  Does this system address the problems I have

System Features “Needs” ▫Must differentiate Needs vs Wants  You don’t build it if you don’t “need” it.  Helps determine priority ▫Example of a need statement  We need a new system because it can not handle the volume of orders  We need a new system because we cannot store all the data needed ▫A need does not describe anything about the system itself; a feature does

System Features Features ▫‘a service the system provides to fulfill one or more needs’ ▫Should describe at least a portion of the need ▫Difficult to clearly state are features involving time  The new system must have improved performance ▫Features can also contradict themselves  The screen shall show all order and product information  The screen shall be not be cluttered

System Features Features ▫Not usually testable ▫Help in deriving requirements ▫Help in determining initial scope  Give general estimates on projects  T-shirt sizes  Order Of Magnitude estimates (OOMs)

System Features Figure 9-1 (page 97) ▫Needs and features are closely related

System Features Needs drive Features Features drive Requirements Result ▫Requirements can be traced back to one or more features ▫Features can be traced back to one or more needs

System Features What are some needs of an Online Credit Card Info System?

System Features Credit Card Info System needs ▫Must stay competitive  Making statements available for our customers ▫Customers who maybe be late with payments become frustrated and may take their business else where

System Features What are some features of an Online Credit Card Info System?

System Features Credit Card Info System features ▫Customer can manage aspects of their billing online ▫Customer can get up-to-date account statements without having to wait for monthly mailed versions

System Features Once we have our list of features we need to ▫Categorize into projects ▫Schedule Release (usually based on project) ▫Reject the feature (make sure to document)

System Features Features ▫Translation to Requirements  Functional  Use cases are good for these requirements ▫Usually workflow dependant ▫Open Account ▫Place Bid  Non-functional  These do not fit the Use Case model and are documented separately

System Features What type of system/application does not have workflow oriented tasks?

System Features Microsoft Office Products ▫Not a whole lot of workflow type tasks ▫Some systems like this might be easier to create a list of features What are some word processor features?