You’ve just finished a two-month, 150+ page SRS, gone through the validation process, and have sign-off from everyone. Congratulations! Time to kick back, relax, and watch the other teams build the product, right? Well, not exactly. As Product Managers, we still have a responsibility to help ensure that the product is completed correctly. In this [...]

Assuming you have a basic target format for your requirements (a template or structure in a tool), you need to decide how you are categorizing the information within that format. For example, you might be grouping requirements by feature, by use case, by sub-system, etc. In Part 1, I discussed an approach for this, to [...]

A few weeks ago, I was participating in a design review session for my current project. The visual designer was walking the project team through his UI mockups for a particular feature of the system. He asked us a question to clarify the functionality of one of the UI “widgets,” which the business SME/sponsor answered, [...]

Let’s say you have successfully gathered lots of requirements using various techniques and sources – now what? You are now faced with the daunting task of turning the chaos that we call “notes” into organized content in the form of a requirements specification. At this point, you are likely in one of two situations: 1. [...]

There was a neat article in the July 13 Dr Dobbs Agile Modeling Newsletter. http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/201001273 It basically argued that you could evaluate the quality of a document based on a set of criteria: C = The percentage of the document that is currently “correct”.R = Thechance that the document will be read by the intended [...]

In the first part of this post, I covered some underlying principles to keep in mind when preparing for a meeting. This second part will pick up where that one left off, covering some suggestions for managing the meeting and moving forward once the meeting is over. As a quick reminder, before the meeting begins [...]

I’ve traditionally been somewhat neutral on what amount of design gets slipped into a requirements document. I’m a consultant, and to a certain extent, I’m willing to accept that the things that are important to a customer ARE the requirements, whether they are true “business requirements” or a design that indicates a choice by the [...]

I often hear people say that they spend too much time in meetings. And that got me thinking … are we frustrated because of the amount of time we’re spending in meetings, or are we frustrated because of problems with the meetings themselves? Is the problem not “how much” or “how many”, but “how good”? [...]

This story may sound familiar to you. A man decides to go to the store one Sunday morning to get a newspaper. Being the thoughtful husband he is he says to his wife “Honey, I’m going to the store for a newspaper, is there anything you need?” She replies “Oh, yes, could you get some [...]

We deploy Sharepoint as one of the ways to collaborate on software projects. The basic organization of Sharepoint is a hierarchy of sites. Within those sites are lists and document libraries. The lists take the form of announcements, calendar entries and tasks. One of the key functions that is missing is a way to roll-up [...]