Executable Specifications with Scrum: A Practical Guide to Agile Requirements Discovery

by Mario Cardinal

Most books about specifications still assume that requirements can be known up front and won't change much during your project. In today's "real world," however, you must specify and build software in the face of high and continuing uncertainty. Scrum and other agile methods have evolved to reflect this reality. Now, there's a complete guide to specifying software in agile environments when prerequisites are unclear, requirements are difficult to grasp, and anything about your project could change.Long-time agile coach and enterprise architect Mario Cardinal shows how to create executable specifications and use them to test software behavior against requirements. Cardinal shows how to trawl requirements incrementally, step-by-step, using a vision-centric and emergent iterative practice that is designed for agility. Writing for analysts, architects, developers, and managers, Cardinal makes a strong case for the iterative discovery of requirements. Then, he moves from theory to practice, fully explaining the technical mechanisms and empirical techniques you need to gain full value from executable specifications.You'll learn to connect specifications with software under construction, link requirements to architecture, and automate requirements verification within the Scrum framework. Above all, Cardinal will help you solve the paramount challenge of software not only to solve the problem right, but also to solve the right problem .You will learn how to- Establish more effective agile roles for analysts and architects- Integrate and simplify the best techniques from FIT, ATDD, and BDD- Identify "core certainties" on which your project team should rely to ensure requirements discovery- Manage uncertainty by discovering stakeholder desires through short feedback loops- Specify as you go while writing small chunks of requirements- Use storyboarding and paper prototyping to improve conversations with stakeholders- Express stakeholder desires that are requirements with user stories- Refine your user stories, and plan more effective Scrum sprints- Confirm user stories by scripting behaviors with scenarios- Transform scenarios into automated tests that easily confirm your software's expected behavior as designs emerge and specifications evolve- Ensure higher-quality software by specifying nonfunctional requirements

193 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 28, 2013

Reviews

[Gopal Katragadda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent compendium of practices for conducting a requirements discovery in uncertain environments. These practices support test driven development and iterative discovery of requirements.

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a short book and frankly quite a deception. There is no so much room for "executable specifications" here, but instead a text mostly dedicated to the newbies. One of the original things (and possibly the source of proud of the author) is about the concept of "restrictions" for non-functionnal requirements. I didn't find it convincing, far from it. Not worth reading.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici

[Christina Jain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but well-structured introduction on agile test driven development. This book is useful for product managers and engineering leads alike, as Cardinal provides ample detail on how to structure user stories (i.e. given-when-then) as well as the technical implementation of acceptance tests (red-green-refactor). The book unfortunately provides few practical case studies, so the reader must go elsewhere to seek examples of his suggested guidelines in practice.