Focus on Well Documented Functional Requirements
by Nathan Weller
Every software product, no matter what its type or application, has Requirements. A Requirement is literally “that which is required; a thing demanded or obligatory”. Every software product created has a purpose – that which it is constructed to achieve – and thus will contain at least one Requirement. After all, if there is no purpose to a product, then it is not constructed – for to do so expends time, money and energy for no return.
Therefore, every software product has an aim. From this, it could easily be assumed that success of the product depends entirely upon the product achieving its preconceived aim. However, the real world is a lot more complex.
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Why?
I stopped reading at the first Note. Why not follow the same prescription for Agile projects? If different methodologies produce the same end product, why wouldn't the need for well documented requirements be the same?
As we encounter new projects in our IT division that had a product with a prior project team adopt this "agile" thinking, we are finding that their use of agile as the excuse for lack of proper documentation costs us incredible amounts of time to reverse engineer code and process flows to determine what the requirements might have been, document them, and only then start the new project.