Overview

We have addressed topics in this book that are of great significance to the RA:

• Requirements are important, and leveraging requirements-related activities on a project has great power and effect (Chapter 1).

• Effective practices and documented, well understood processes are needed on projects of all sizes, not just for large-scale development (Chapter 1).

• Industry experience demonstrates the value of investing 8% to 14% of total project costs in the system life-cycle requirements process; data confirms that this level of investment produces the best results (Chapter 1).

• Criteria should be developed for a good requirement and each requirement should be evaluated against this list to clarify and restate the requirement (Chapter 1).

• Documentation of the rationale for each requirement (why it is needed) may eliminate up to half of the stated requirements (and a lot of costs) (Chapter 1).

• Differentiate between stated requirements and real requirements, and work collaboratively with your customers and users to identify the real requirements (Chapter 1).

• Planning the requirements effort and writing a requirements plan will pay good dividends (Chapter 1). (Watts Humphrey's books, Introduction to the Personal Software Process [1] and Introduction to the Team Software Process [2] provide good insights into the value of planning. ^[1])

• All projects, with the possible exception of "tiny" projects, require an industrial-strength automated requirements tool (Chapters 2 and 5). Start the selection process for the tool of your choice early in the project planning phase, guided by a trade study to ensure...