Writing Higher Quality Software Requirements

While agile and traditional software development methodologies differ in many key practices, they share the mutual goal of accurately representing customer needs through requirements-whatever their form. If requirements are poorly understood, lack key details, or are interpreted differently by stakeholders, unnecessary defects will be introduced into the product. Defects lead to rework which ultimately delays product delivery and decreases customer satisfaction. John Terzakis outlines proven practices, templates, and techniques you can use for writing requirements that more accurately capture customer needs. He discusses issues with “natural language,” shares ten attributes of well-written requirements, and explores ambiguity checklists. John presents practical templates and syntaxes for stories (aka scenarios), use cases, and traditional requirements documentation. He provides examples of poorly written requirements, analyzes them, and then rewrites them using the approaches he's introduced. Regardless of the development lifecycle your team employs, you'll leave this session with new tools and techniques to write higher quality software requirements.