This is the first book to offer a practical way to identify systems requirements and manage them when budgets and schedules are tight. It describes a process that leads from fuzzy, ill-defined requirements to requirements that can be modeled and prototyped.

The book presents methods for communicating requirements and achieving buy-in from system users and owners before expensive programming begins. There are techniques, tools, and software suggestions for project managers and systems analysts, plus case studies that illustrate how the whole requirements-gathering process works.

The cornerstone of the book is its practicality: it brings together a suite of methods, templates, off-the-shelf computer-based tools, and real-world examples. Software developers can use these to get a handle on software requirements and solve the problems they face every day.