"We need better approaches to understanding and managing software requirements, and Dean provides them in this book. He draws ideas from three very useful intellectual pools: classical management practices, Agile methods, and lean product development. By combining the strengths of these three approaches, he has produced something that works better than any one in isolation." --From the Foreword by Don Reinertsen, President of Reinertsen & Associates; author of Managing the Design Factory; and leading expert on rapid product development Effective requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for serious application development. Until now, however, requirements and Agile methods have rarely coexisted peacefully. For many enterprises considering Agile approaches, the absence of effective and scalable Agile requirements processes has been a showstopper for Agile adoption. In Agile Software Requirements, Dean Leffingwell shows exactly how to create effective requirements in Agile environments. * Part I presents the "big picture" of Agile requirements in the enterprise, and describes an overall process model for Agile requirements at the project team, program, and portfolio levels* Part II describes a simple and lightweight, yet comprehensive model that Agile project teams can use to manage requirements* Part III shows how to develop Agile requirements for complex systems that require the cooperation of multiple teams* Part IV guides enterprises in developing Agile requirements for ever-larger "systems of systems," application suites, and product portfolios This book will help you leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements discovery and analysis. You'll find proven solutions you can apply right now--whether you're a software developer or tester, executive, project/program manager, architect, or team leader.
| ISBN | 0321635841 | | Pages | 560 | | ISBN13 | 9780321635846
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 1084 | | Publisher | Pearson Education (US) | | Published in | New Jersey | | Imprint | Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc | | Height (mm) | 232 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 187 | | Publication date | 27 Dec 2010 | | Spine width (mm) | 34 | | DEWEY | 005.1 | | Academic level | Tertiary education | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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Foreword xxiii Preface xxvii Acknowledgments xxxiii About the Author xxxv Part I: Overview: The Big Picture 1 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Software Requirements Methods 3 Software Requirements in Context: Decades of Predictive, Waterfall-Like Processes 5 Iterative and Incremental Processes 9 Adaptive (Agile) Processes 12 Requirements Management in Agile Is Fundamentally Different 16 Enterprise-Scale Adaptive Processes 19 Introduction to Lean Software 20 Summary 28 Chapter 2: The Big Picture of Agile Requirements 31 The Big Picture Explained 32 Big Picture: Team Level 34 Big Picture: Program Level 38 Big-Picture Elements: Portfolio Level 43 Summary 45 Chapter 3: Agile Requirements for the Team 47 Introduction to the Team Level 47 Agile Team Roles and Responsibilities 50 User Stories and the Team Backlog 55 Acceptance Tests 58 Unit Tests 60 Summary 61 Chapter 4: Agile Requirements for the Program 63 Introduction to the Program Level 63 Organizing Agile Teams at Scale 64 Vision 74 Features 75 Nonfunctional Requirements 77 The Agile Release Train 80 Roadmap 81 Summary 82 Chapter 5: Agile Requirements for the Portfolio 83 Introduction to the Portfolio Level 83 Investment Themes 84 Portfolio Management Team 85 Epics and the Portfolio Backlog 85 Epics, Features, and Stories 87 Architectural Runway and Architectural Epics 88 Summary 91 Summary of the Full, Enterprise Requirements Information Model 91 Interlude: Case Study: Tendril Platform 93 Background for the Case Study 93 System Context Diagram 95 Part II: Agile Requirements for the Team 97 Chapter 6: User Stories 99 Introduction 99 User Story Form 102 INVEST in Good User Stories 105 Splitting User Stories 111 Spikes 114 Technical Spikes and Functional Spikes 114 Story Modeling with Index Cards 116 Summary 117 Chapter 7: Stakeholders, User Personas, and User Experiences 119 Stakeholders 119 Identifying Stakeholders 122 User Personas 126 Agile and User Experience Development 129 Summary 133 Chapter 8: Agile Estimating and Velocity 135 Introduction 135 Why Estimate? The Business Value of Estimating 137 Estimating Scope with Story Points 138 Understanding Story Points: An Exercise 138 An Alternate Technique: Tabletop Relative Estimation 145 From Scope Estimates to Team Velocity 146 Caveats on the Relative Estimating Model 147 From Velocity to Schedule and Cost 148 Estimating with Ideal Developer Days 149 A Hybrid Model 151 Summary 152 Chapter 9: Iterating, Backlog, Throughput, and Kanban 155 Iterating: The Heartbeat of Agility 155 Backlog, Lean, and Throughput 169 Software Kanban Systems 179 Summary 180 Chapter 10: Acceptance Testing 183 Why Write About Testing in an Agile Requirements Book? 183 Agile Testing Overview 184 What Is Acceptance Testing? 187 Characteristics of Good Story Acceptance Tests 188 Acceptance Test-Driven Development 190 Acceptance Test Template 192 Automated Acceptance Testing 193 Unit and Component Testing 196 Summary 199 Chapter 11: Role of the Product Owner 201 Is This a New Role? 201 Perspectives on Dual Roles of Product Owner and Product Manager 202 Responsibilities of the Product Owner in the Enterprise 207 Five Essential Attributes of a Good Product Owner 218 Collaboration with Product Managers 220 Product Owner Bottlenecks: Part-Time Product Owners, Product Owner Proxies, Product Owner Teams 221 Seeding the Product Owner Role in the Enterprise 222 Summary 224 Chapter 12: Requirements Discovery Toolkit 227 The Requirements Workshop 228 Brainstorming 232 Interviews and Questionnaires 237 User Experience Mock-Ups 241 Forming a Product Council 243 Competitive Analysis 244 Customer Change Request Systems 245 Use-Case Modeling 247 Summary 247 Part III: Agile Requirements for the Program 249 Chapter 13: Vision, Features, and Roadmap 251 Vision 251 Expressing the Vision 252 Features 255 Estimating Features 257 Testing Features 260 Prioritizing Features 261 The Ro
Praise for Agile Software Requirements "In my opinion, there is no book out there that more artfully addresses the specific needs of agile teams, programs, and portfolios all in one. I believe this book is an organizational necessity for any enterprise." --Sarah Edrie, Director of Quality Engineering, Harvard Business School "Agile Software Requirements and Mr. Leffingwell's teachings have been very influential and inspiring to our organization. They have allowed us to make critical cultural changes to the way we approach software development by following the framework he's outlined here. It has been an extraordinary experience." --Chris Chapman, Software Development Manager, Discount Tire "This book supplies empirical wisdom connected with strong and very well-structured theory of succeeding with software projects of different scales. People new to agile, practitioners, or accomplished agilists--we all were waiting for such a book." --Oleksandr (Alex) Yakyma, Agile Consultant, www.enter-Agile.com "This book presents practical and proven agile approaches for managing software requirements for a team, collaborating teams of teams, and all across the enterprise. However, this is not only a great book on agile requirements engineering; rather, Leffingwell describes the bigger picture of how the enterprise can achieve the benefits of business agility by implementing lean product development flow. His 'Big Picture' of agile requirements is an excellent reference for any organization pursuing an intrinsically lean software development operational mode. Best of all, we've applied many of these principles and practices at Nokia (and even helped create some of them), and therefore we know they work. --Juha-Markus Aalto, Agile Change Program Manager, Nokia Corporation "This pragmatic, easy-to-understand, yet thought-provoking book provides a hands-on guide to addressing a key problem that enterprises face: How to make requirements practices work effectively in large-scale agile environments. Dean Leffingwell's focus on lean principles is refreshing and much needed!" --Per Kroll, author, and Chief Architect for Measured Improvements, IBM "Agile programming is a fluid development environment. This book serves as a good starting point for learning." --Brad Jackson, SAS Institute Inc. "Dean Leffingwell captures the essence of agile in its entirety, all the way from the discrete user story in the 'trenches' to complex software portfolios at the enterprise level. The narrative balances software engineering theory with pragmatic implementation aspects in an easy-to-understand manner. It is a book that demands to be read in a single sitting." --Israel Gat,
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