Skip to main content

Software Requirements 3, by Karl E Wiegers, Joy Beatty, Microsoft Press


One of the areas often overlooked when writing software systems is thoroughly understanding what needs to be developed. Specifically who are the users that are going to interact with the system, what are they trying to accomplish with the software, and how is the system expected to behave under normal and error conditions. In short, developing software requirements and specifications before the software is written.

"Software Requirements 3" addresses these questions, with clear answers and advice in a rather longish format of roughly 673 pages.

The book starts with a story about the importance of software requirements: a case of an employee who changed her last name without getting married, and the accounting software's inability to handle the change, with the repercussions that the employee will not get paid until the the "bug" is fixed. The book mentions that this is not an atypical situation, and that 
... errors introduced during requirements activities account for 40 to 50 percent of all defects found in a software product
The book proceeds to explain how to prevent problems like these from happening in the future, through explaining the mechanics of requirements gathering starting with defining who the customer is, and who the decision makers are, followed by a tour of the requirement gathering process, including requirements elicitations, and appropriate documentation.  The book advocates readable, concise, and precise requirements documentation, and ample use of imagery to explain difficult concepts.

The book offers advice on how to reduce development risk, through frequent customer checkpoints as things are developed, to minimize the mismatch between customer expectations, and what developers build. The book also advocates building prototypes to illustrate concepts, and drive conversations to minimize the gap between what's being build, and what customers expect.

The book addresses the often ignored fact that requirements frequently change during the development process, and offers a full chapter on handling these changes, and tools for managing the changes.

The book is geared toward the business analyst, but software engineers would benefit greatly from reading it. And despite the book's length, the authors' writing style is approachable, and it was a pleasure to read.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emacs on WSL2: From Monochrome Misery to Modern Elegance

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has come a long way—especially under Windows 11 . WSL2 now offers smooth integration for Linux graphical applications, making it feel less like a compatibility layer and more like a native experience. But if you're an Emacs user, you might have noticed something off. Launching Emacs under WSL can feel like stepping into a time machine. Tiny fonts, washed-out visuals, and a UI that evokes the green-and-amber glow of vintage terminals. Functional? Yes. Pleasant? Absolutely not. But here's the good news: it is easy to make Emacs under WSL2 look just as sharp and modern as it does on Mac OSX . The emacs-pgtk build is designed for better graphical integration under WSL. It uses the Pure GTK interface , which plays nicely with WSL’s GUI support. sudo apt install emacs-pgtk To make Emacs look great, we’ll use Windows’ rich font library. First, edit your font configuration: sudo emacs /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and add the Windows Font directory...
Post a Comment
Read more

MacOS Catalina, OneDrive, and case sensitive file systems

Over the weekend, I dusted off my old Macbook Air to search for some old family photos. I have not used the laptop for a long time, and it was completely out of charge. I plugged it in, and it quickly booted. Shortly after, I got bombarded with notifications that many of the applications needed updating, and that a new version of the OS was available.   I waited till I found the photos I was looking for, before attempting to upgrade anything. I also wanted to install OneDrive to get my old files to the cloud, so that I can access them from any of my devices, instead of dusting off old computers to get to them. The MacOS upgrade experience has always been fantastic, and this one was no different. The OS upgrade files downloaded quickly and after a restart and a quick install, the Macbook Air was ready to go.   Upgrading the installed applications was also a breeze, however in the process I discovered that a large majority of the applications installed were not compatible ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Randomized Algorithms: Polynomial equivalence

We are all accustomed to deterministic algorithms; we work with them every day, and feel comfortable in knowing that the results of running them are predictable, barring a coding error of course. The idea of randomized algorithms feels remote and uncomfortable, despite their usefulness and elegance.  There are a couple of great examples in the introductory chapters of the book " Probability and Computing " that are an eye opener. One is verifying polynomial identities: how can you tell that two different representations of polynomials are the same? For example, if we have two polynomials $P(x)$ and $Q(x)$, both of degree $d$ described by the following formulas: \[ P(x) = \Sigma_{i=0}^{i=d} a_i x^i \\ Q(x) = \Pi_{i=1}^{i=d} (x-b_i) \] how can we determine that they are the same polynomial? Intuitively we first check that the degrees are the same, then we could try to transform one form into the other, either by multiplying out the terms for $Q(x)$, collecting like t...
Post a Comment
Read more