Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right, 4th edition

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (August 30, 2024) © 2025

  • James Robertson
  • Suzanne Robertson Atlantic Systems Guild
  • Adrian Reed
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Products list

Details

  • A print text
  • Free shipping

Title overview

One of the joys of product development, whether it be software, service, or hardware, is getting it right. The way to get it right is to uncover the real business problem, and to write the requirements for the solution that best solves that problem.

Without the right requirements it is impossible to build the right solution. Mastering the Requirements Process, Fourth Edition, gives you an industry-proven process for getting to the essence of the business problem and then writing unambiguous and testable requirements for its solution.

This fourth edition is an almost complete rewrite that brings requirements discovery into today's world--it is the book for today's business analyst. Product owners and project leaders will also find it valuable as it explains how to discover precisely what the customer needs and wants, and to do it effectively in any business or project environment.

The book tells you how to:

  • Use the Volere requirements process to discover requirements in both traditional and agile environments
  • Incorporate off-the-shelf (OTS) solutions into your requirements discovery
  • Use artificial intelligence (AI) as part of your requirements discovery, and as part of your business solution
  • Use quickly sketched prototypes to explore the problem space
  • Understand functional and non-functional requirements
  • Write better agile stories
  • Make your requirements and stories measurable and testable using fit criteria
  • Use business events as the heartbeat of business analysis
  • Discover requirements in agile, commercial, and milspec project environments
  • Find and prioritise your customer segments
  • Leverage systems thinking when discovering requirements
  • Use story maps and other requirements repository techniques
  • Know which trawling techniques are the most effective for requirements discovery
  • Synchronise your requirements discovery with agile development teams
  • Make better decisions in the early days of a project to increase your chances of success
  • Employ the Volere requirements specification template (downloaded 10,000+ times) as the basis for your own requirement specifications

Table of contents

  • Part I: Requirements Are the Root of Everything
  • Chapter 1: Requirements Fundamentals
  • Chapter 2: Your Requirements Arena
  • Part II: Project Blastoff
  • Chapter 3: Understand the Real Problem
  • Chapter 4: The Value of Solving the Problem
  • Chapter 5: Goals-Scope-Stakeholders
  • Chapter 6: Customer Segments
  • Chapter 7: Business Events
  • Chapter 8: Prioritizing the Business Events
  • Chapter 9: To Go or Not to Go?
  • Part III: Prototyping for Requirements
  • Chapter 10: Generating Sacrificial Candidate Solutions
  • Chapter 11: Prototypes, Prototypes, Prototypes
  • Chapter 12: Ready-Made Solutions
  • Chapter 13: Creative Candidate Solutions
  • Chapter 14: Probing and Exploring the Candidates
  • Chapter 15: Using Prototypes as the Specification
  • Part IV: Trawling for Requirements
  • Chapter 16: The Essence of the Problem
  • Chapter 17: Business Events and Business Use Cases
  • Chapter 18: The Brown Cow Model
  • Chapter 19: Workshops
  • Chapter 20: Scenarios
  • Chapter 21: Stories
  • Chapter 22: Business Process Models
  • Chapter 23: Stored Data
  • Chapter 24: Other Trawling Techniques
  • Part V: Writing Good Requirements and Stories
  • Chapter 25: Functional Requirements
  • Chapter 26: Non-functional Requirements
  • Chapter 27: Fit Criteria and Rationale
  • Chapter 28: Writing Good Stories
  • Chapter 29: Acceptance Criteria
  • Part VI: Designing Business Solutions
  • Chapter 30: Business Solutions
  • Chapter 31: Determine the Extent of the Automation
  • Chapter 32: Designing Information and Functionality
  • Chapter 33: Designing Using Ready-Mades
  • Part VII: Requirements Repository
  • Chapter 34: Requirements Specification
  • Chapter 35: Story Map
  • Chapter 36: Quality Thinking
  • Chapter 37: Completeness Check
  • Chapter 38: Managing Requirements
  • Part VIII: The Conduct of Business Analysis
  • Chapter 39: Your Process
  • Chapter 40: The Importance of the Early Days
  • Chapter 41: People
  • Chapter 42: Systems Thinking
  • Chapter 43: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Chapter 44: Learning as You Go
  • Chapter 45: Requirements and Innovation
  • Appendix A: The Volere Requirements Specification Template
  • Appendix B: Stakeholder Management Templates
  • Appendix C: Volere Requirements Knowledge Model

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