1. Methods for Effective Requirements Development
Ivy Hooks
Compliance Automation Inc.

2. A Few Methods Share the vision Create operational concepts
Involve all stakeholders
Apply discipline and control to requirement format

4. Have a Vision
Share that Vision

5. Else everyone picks their own vision
This is a software example of the costs to fix a requirement error. The same concept applies to hardware. The units are some type of resource (dollars, man hours, etc.).
The main point is that the cost goes up dramatically the further you get into development because of the unnecessary rework.
Work-arounds are bad and frustrating. Fix problems early to avoid rework, increased costs, and slips in your schedule.
To avoid these problems you must take the time to make sure you have a good set of requirements before beginning design and development.

7. Vision Needs, goals and objectives
Operational concepts for all life-cycle phases
Involving all stakeholders - early
Defining drivers and interfaces

8. Operational Concepts
A day in the life of your product

9. All life-cycle phases

10. All Stakeholders
Manufacturing
Marketing
Users
Testing
Management

11. Reverse Engineer the Vision
Someone gives you requirements and no vision – you invent the vision
You take it back to that someone and get confirmation
Expect magic

12. Requirements
Are about communication
Apple

13. Basics of Good Requirements
Clear, concise, unambiguous
Grammatically correct
Positive statements
Needed
Verifiable
Attainable – technically, cost, schedule
Include rationale
Well organized

14. Words to watch for Words that end in –ly or –ize.
Etc., including but not limited to
Support, accommodate, be capable of, be able to
And/or
Sufficient, robust, user-friendly, easy to use, adequate, maximize, minimize, optimize, …

15. Forget what you learned in English 101
The system shall provide its own power
The system shall operate autonomously
The system shall have built-in-self test
Requirements are supposed to be boring

16. Remove Unwanted Implementation
The aircraft shall have three engines.
The aircraft shall meet the operation requirements with a single engine out.
WHY?
What do you want to verify?

17. Beware of Operations
The operator shall be able to turn the machine on or off

18. Don’t Allow Bad Requirements
Set up a gate
Define the rules
Don’t accept poor quality requirements
Use inspections to find requirement defects early
Hold effective reviews
Reward good requirements

19. Frequent Response BEFORE CLASS
What problem do you want to cover in the class?
How do we deal with constantly changing requirements?
AFTER CLASS
What problem do you see to implementing what you have learned? My manager won’t change, will just keep doing things the same old way.

20. Why Johnny Can’t Write Requirements
He doesn’t know how
The schedule ignores the process
We need cultural change
True in 1990 and still true today

21. Solution to all problems
Reorganize
The object of this class is so you can learn to conduct an efficient, effective review process that enables you to find errors, fix those errors, assess risk, conserve resources, and minimize the time to do this.
To find errors in your requirements you need domain knowledge to detect incorrect, missing, or conflicting requirements. It is hard to edit your own work because you are too close (can’t see the forest for the trees.) You need a fresh set of eyes to review your requirements.
You may not always have a finished set, so you need to determine when the risk is acceptable to go forward and start development.
You want a process that makes the best use of resources – you don’t want to waste peoples time.
Finally, your review and baseline process needs to be done in a streamlined, efficient, and effective manner. You can’t afford for this process to go on without end.
A major outcome of this class is the you will learn a 4 1/2 step review process to ensure that you have a good set of requirements prior to baseline, that you know the risk of proceeding with development, and that you know the lessons learned from your requirements capture experience.
Note: There is no need to go into further detail. There are other slides that will go into the detail of each point.
Buy tools

22. No time to do it right Putting out fires is fun
Doing it right gets no respect

23. Enter the hero

24. Better Requirements = $$$$$ earned
Put process in place
Educate your people
Reward those who do it right the first time
Reap the rewards

25. Information Ecology, Thomas H. Davenport, Oxford 1997
References
Customer-Centered Products – Creating Successful Products Through Smart Requirement Management, Ivy Hooks and Kristin Farry, AMACOM 2000
The Stuff Americans Are Made Of, Josh Hammond and James Morrison, Macmillan 1996
Information Ecology, Thomas H. Davenport, Oxford 1997
Give students HO 6 which includes a spec without rationale, scope, or extra ops concepts
Students will see how hard it is to check tracing without scope, ops concepts, and rationale.