Business and Technology Requirements documents

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- FS -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

Gaye -

It's just like walking in flippers: the best way to do it is backwards.

What minimum of information is needed in the 'Define & Design' documents
for everyone on the team to get started on their jobs?

- QA people to draft a test plan
- marketing people to draft marketing lit.
- tech writers to write an information plan
- engineers/developers to produce detailed specs or prototypes

If your starting point is "what's supposed to be in a requirements
document?", you're likely to end up with fluff -- how great the product
is going to be, some interesting facts about the product, whose idea it
was, how we intend to optimise the sorting algorithm, etc.

A more practical approach is to start with the stakeholders --

"The 'CamelCaps! Pro for Windows 95 Lite' Requirements Document will be
ready on 30 April. You have to deliver a draft documentation plan on 7
May. What information do you need there to be in the requirements docs?"

"The 'CamelCaps! Pro for Windows 95 Lite' Requirements Document will be
ready on 30 April. You have to deliver a draft QA plan on 7 May. What
information do you need there to be in the requirements docs?"

And so on.  Ideally, it should be possible for people with no prior
involvement in the project to write the specs, QA plan, brochures, etc.,
purely from the final requirements docs.

Regards
---
StuartBurnfield! Lite (slb -at- fs -dot- com -dot- au)   Voice: +61 9 328 8288
Functional Software Pty Ltd             Fax:   +61 9 328 8616

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