Some people have pointed out that the reason I don’t like agile methods is because I am trying to sell services which depend on “traditional” requirements. The reason I like “traditional” requirements is because I don’t like screwed up projects. Everyone is trying to sell something and the Agile gurus are no different. The problem [...]

A February article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Defeating Feature Fatigue (excerpted here) really struck a nerve with me. The dilemma that the authors call out in their paper is captured perfectly here: Adding features improves the initial attractiveness of a product but ultimately decreases customers’ satisfaction with it. So what should you do? [...]

I feel very strongly that the more complex your business process is, the more well-defined your requirements must be. The analysis of these requirements also becomes more and more important and less and less possible by the SMEs and end-users. The reason for this has to do with the definition of ‘complex’ used in the [...]

There’s been a lot written about software requirements gathering as a component of the software development life cycle. Proper requirements are critical to being able to build the right piece of software for the right cost on the right schedule. But what about software that you are going to buy? Does gathering requirements still make [...]

#10- You cannot quickly understand new concepts. Fear not, this doesn’t mean you are stupid. It just means you think through problems in a way that does not lend itself to good requirements gathering. In the role of a requirements expert, you have to be able to think on your feet, grasping new ideas from [...]