Articles

Global customers Know Your Customers: They Can Help You Write Better User Stories

Too many user stories begin, "As a user …" Who is your user? Or, more accurately, who are they? Improving your understanding of the types of customers who use your software lets you see multiple products where previously, there was only one—and identifying dedicated products will help you prioritize and accelerate delivery.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
User story card User Story Heuristics: Understanding Agile Requirements

Agile emphasizes just-in-time requirements rather than upfront preparation. The requirements person—be it the product owner, business analyst, product manager, or someone else—embodies the understanding of what is needed, and the user story represents the work that needs doing. This article details what user stories are (and what they are not).

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
Agile Helped Cooperation An Experience Where Agile Approaches Helped

This article addresses a process where a team moved from a traditional waterfall model to using agile elements in order to deliver a product to a government agency. It talks about typical problems that come up in a transition to agile, complications from distributed teams, and the advantages and disadvantages of the process for government or nongovernment clients.

Yamini Munipalli's picture Yamini Munipalli
It’s Time for Requirements Craftsmanship It’s Time for Requirements Craftsmanship

Holly Bielawa explains that being a a requirements craftsman means that you need to test your assumptions in real time while developing a product. Then you pivot as needed, change your business model as you learn, and constantly get out of the building and gather data to determine your minimally marketable product.

Holly Bielawa's picture Holly Bielawa
 Assumptions to Model Value (or Not) Using Goals, Objectives, and Assumptions to Model Value (or Not)

Kent McDonald writes that identifying objectives and the assumptions underlying them provides you a way to measure whether the result of your project will actually get you closer to what you are trying to accomplish, as well as the impact your various assumptions have on reaching that objective. 

Kent J. McDonald's picture Kent J. McDonald
Using Agile for Requirements Management Using Agile for Requirements Management

Charuta Phansalkar writes on the necessity of capturing and understanding requirements using agile practices. Agile, when implemented effectively, will ensure that the customer's voice is clearly understood throughout the project, which results in maximum customer satisfaction.

Charuta Phansalkar's picture Charuta Phansalkar
 Thinking Up Front about Agile Requirements An Agile Approach to Thinking Up Front about Requirements

Thinking about interacting with the customer at the start of the project? Who would argue against that? Well, it depends on what you call it. It also depends on whether you then do it without the benefit of the rest of the project team. Here, Ulrika Park helps us see what an agile approach to thinking about the requirements might look like.

Ulrika Park's picture Ulrika Park
working together Harvesting Stakeholder Perspectives to Organize Your Backlog

When Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener facilitated a game called The Backlog Is in the Eye of the Beholder for the Boston chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis, both the players and the facilitators learned some important lessons in organizing a project requirements backlog. In this article, they describe the game and what it revealed, including the value of truly knowing your stakeholders.

How Agile Practices Reduce Requirements Risks

Requirements risks are among the most insidious risks threatening software projects. Whether it is having unclear requirements, lack of customer involvement in requirements development, or defective requirements, these troubles are a major culprit in projects that go awry. As requirements expert and agile coach Ellen Gottesdiener explains, agile practice can go a long way in mitigating those risks.

Ellen Gottesdiener's picture Ellen Gottesdiener
Information Gathering

If your customer interview questions focus too narrowly on a problem that must be solved, you run the risk of missing information that could be critical to a successful outcome. In this column, Naomi Karten says playing detective improves your ability to gather information. To improve the odds of success, it's important to ask questions from multiple perspectives—and to pay attention not only to the customers' response, but to how they say it as well.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten

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