Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is a decent book on using software requirements to help center and guide the running software projects. The Robertsons break no new ground here that wasn't probably better explained in their "Mastering the Requirements Process" for the requirements aspects of the book. As a project management book, I think that requirements are important but so are many things in running a project. I have found the Robertsons approach a bit too simplistic and I think that shows on the project management side as well.
The key message here is that if you get the requirements right, the project will fall into place and run much better. Requirements are key to getting good estimates, scheduling, aligning stakeholders, testing, etc. Well this is true, but hard. The Robertsons talk Agile talk but don't do the Agile walk. One of the keys to Agile is that full, complete, or even mostly complete requirements are a myth. Learn a little, build a little. The Robertsons change that to learn a lot, build a little. Not quite the same. I personally agree that we should learn more about the problem space of a software project than what some Agile methods call for. Then again, I don't reference Beck and Folwer as much as the Robertsons do.
What I personally am having difficulty doing is agreeing to the Robertsons advice to "invent" requirements. To me this is a slippery slope not worth going down. I think the requirements analyst's job is to fully understand the business problem space, perhaps better than the stakeholders themselves. I would like to leave it to the designers to invent the solutions. Sometimes that is the same person and that is OK by me. However, I think as an activity list, they should be different categories.
So, if you have read "Mastering the Requirements Process" and you are primarily interested in requirements techniques, there isn't much need to buy this book. If you are into project management and want a different viewpoint from many of the PM books out there, this may work for you.
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Product Description:
Requirements are a crucial ingredient of any successful project. This is true for any product--software, hardware, consumer appliance, or large-scale construction. You have to understand its requirements--what is needed and desired--if you are to build the right product. Most developers recognize the truth in this statement, even if they don't always live up to it. Far less obvious, however, is the contribution that the requirements activity makes to project management. Requirements, along with other outputs from the requirements activity, are potent project management tools.In Requirements-Led Project Management, Suzanne and James Robertson show how to use requirements to manage the development lifecycle. They show program managers, product and project managers, team leaders, and business analysts specifically how to:
Use requirements as input to project planning and decision-making
Determine whether to invest in a project
Deliver more appropriate products with a quick cycle time
Measure and estimate the requirements effort
Define the most effective requirements process for a project
Manage stakeholder involvement and expectations
Set requirements priorities
Manage requirements across multiple domains and technologies
Use requirements to communicate across business and technological boundaries
In their previous book, Mastering the Requirements Process, the Robertsons defined Volere--their groundbreaking and now widely adopted requirements process. In this second book, they look at the outputs from the requirements process and demonstrate how you can take advantage of the all-important links between requirements and project success.
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