How to Write Effective Requirements for IT - Simply Put!: Use Four Simple Rules to Improve the Quality of Your IT Requirements

by Thomas Hathaway, Angela Hathaway

Writing requirements is one of the core competencies for anyone in an organization responsible for defining future Information Technology (IT) applications. However, nearly every independently executed, root-cause analysis of IT project problems and failures in the past half-century have identified "misunderstood or incomplete requirements" as the primary cause. This has made writing requirements the bane of many projects. The real problem is the subtle differences between "understanding" someone else’s requirement and "sharing a common understanding" with the author. "How to Write Effective Requirements for IT – Simply Put!" gives you a set of 4 simple rules that will make your requirement statements more easily understood by all target audiences. The focus is to increase the " common understanding" between the author of a requirement and the solution providers (e.g., in-house or outsourced IT designers, developers, analysts, and vendors). The rules we present in this book will reduce the failure rate of projects suffering from poor requirements. Regardless of your job title or role, if you are tasked with communicating your future needs to others, this book will guide you step by step. It includes optional exercises with instant feedback to increase retention. Who should read this book? Anyone involved in capturing, writing, analyzing, or understanding requirements for Information Technology solutions, including (but not limited to): Regardless of your title or role, if you are involved in defining requirements, this book is for you. Specifically, this book will give you techniques How to get the most out of this book? To maximize the learning effect, you will have optional, online exercises to assess your understanding of each presented technique. You will run across chapter titles prefaced with the phrase “Exercise”. Those chapters contain a link to a web-based exercise that we have prepared to give you an opportunity to try the presented technique yourself.

102 pages, Paperback

Published July 31, 2016

Reviews

[Chianna]

Pros:
Good tips
Internet linked self testing
Easy to read for the most part

Cons:
Tips could be shallow
True examples were lacking
I feel like I know ideas without good mastery in application

May check in to a udemy.com class on the same and see if it is better...

[Amy Normandeau]

Clear and a really easy read. It was unfortunate that many of the links to the exercises wouldn't work for me. Otherwise it was a very interesting read, and I was able to put the concepts to the test with a project I am currently working on.