Understanding Requirements

The challenges and opportunities inherent in the expanding role of software and in Agile development have caused an evolution in our understanding of requirements development (RD). The purpose of this book is to share new RD perspectives and pragmatic techniques based on this evolving understanding.

The book provides new perspectives on the goals and strategies of RD as well as the nature of requirements information and understanding. It describes the limitations of uniform approaches to requirements (e.g., Waterfall or Agile) and provides rationale and details so that you can use these new perspectives in your RD activities.

Current RD books thoroughly cover the tasks, techniques, and tools of requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation. While this information is valuable in dealing with many situations, these books omit or contain inadequate information about:

Stakeholder understanding

Demonstrations of developer understanding

Quality attributes



Supporting and conflicting relationships

Goal definitions

Achievement strategies

Verification strategies





Mixed requirements strategies

Requirements management

Requirements risk analysis and management





The references in each chapter include material from articles and books. All referenced articles are freely available on the book's website. The 3D quality model described in chapter 3 is freely available at www.quality-aware.com/daves-q-a-stuff.php.

This book is meant to help experienced practitioners improve their requirements practices and those of their team. Product owners and managers, as well as project managers, should find the content especially useful since they are often responsible for requirements development and management. Other potential readers include requirements leads, technical leads, analysts, testers and other verifiers, quality support staff, developers, consultants, and customers.