Optimize Your Entire Requirements Process–and Use Requirements to Build More Successful Software
Using IBM® Rational® RequisitePro®, you can systematically improve the way you create and maintain requirements–and use those requirements to build more effective, higher-quality software. Now, for the first time, there’s a comprehensive, hands-on guide to optimally using RequisitePro in real-world development environments.
Utilizing a start-to-finish sample project, requirements expert Peter Zielczynski introduces an organized, best-practice approach to managing requirements and shows how to implement every step with RequisitePro. You’ll walk through planning, eliciting, and clarifying stakeholder requirements; building use cases and other key project documents; managing changing requirements; transforming requirements into designs; and much more. Every stage of the process is illuminated with examples, realistic artifacts, and practical solutions.
This book is an invaluable resource for everyone who creates requirements, and everyone who relies on them: business analysts, systems analysts, project managers, architects, designers, developers, and testers alike.
Coverage includes
- Overcoming the three leading causes of project failure: lack of user input, incomplete requirements and specifications, and poorly managed change
- Understanding each type of software requirement–how they interrelate, and what makes a good requirement
- Establishing a Requirements Management Plan that describes how requirements are created and handled throughout the project lifecycle
- Developing a Vision document that can drive your project from beginning to end
- Creating high-quality use cases
- Using requirements as the basis for system design
- Leveraging RequisitePro features for improved project management
- Integrating requirements management with the IBM Rational Unified Process®
Foreword xvii
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxiii
About the Author xxv
Part I: Overview 1
Chapter 1: Requirements Management 3
Chapter 2: Overview of RequisitePro 23
Part II: Requirements Management Activities 33
Chapter 3: Establishing a Requirements Management Plan 35
Chapter 4: Setting up the Project 45
Chapter 5: Requirements Elicitation 63
Chapter 6: Developing a Vision Document 99
Chapter 7: Creating Use Cases 129
Chapter 8: Supplementary Specification 157
Chapter 9: Creating Test Cases from Use Cases 191
Chapter 10: Creating Test Cases from Supplementary Requirements 221
Chapter 11: Object-Oriented Design 243
Chapter 12: Documentation 273
Part III: Other Topics 285
Chapter 13: Managing Projects 287
Chapter 14: Requirements Management in the Rational Unified Process 295
Part IV: Review 311
Chapter 15: Summary 313
Appendix: Sample Requirements Management Plan 319
Index 327
Customer Reviews & Comments
My firm recently began using ReqPro, but despite training sessions and "cheat sheets", many of us were still floundering. I looked for training materials on the IBM web site, but they were all too expensive, so I had to find an alternate source.
I found this book and decided to try it out. It has proved to be one of the best IT BA-related how-to books I've read (and I've read most of them). Not only does it provide clear, lucid instructions on how to use ReqPro, it gives concrete and valuable insight for organizing a large Requirements project. As a result of my own experiences, I recommended that all the BA's in my group be given a copy. It has received excellent reviews from them, as well.
Finally, while it is mainly a book about how to use ReqPro to manage RM, it also provides valuable insight to the generic RM process, that is useful even if you don't use the expensive IBM tool.
