Conventional Requirements Model Flaw Misses REAL Business Requirements
by Robin F. Goldsmith, JD
A fundamental flaw in the widely-held conventional model of requirements creates much of creep and other requirements difficulties. This flaw involves misunderstanding of the nature and role of REAL business requirements. The term “REAL” relates to requirements in two ways. The first way is widely recognizable and is represented in lower-case. People think they know what the requirements are and then learn differently and must revise their requirements definition. Thus, the “real” requirements are what one ends up with, as opposed to what one may have thought initially.
The second use of “REAL” warrants distinguishing with upper case because it represents breakthrough awareness that REAL requirements are business requirements, which are in business terms and are what must be delivered to provide value.
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| Conventional Requirements Model Flaw Misses REAL Business Requirements.pdf | 158.75 KB |
“Perform ordinary bank transactionsâ€
Robin wrote...
.....“Perform ordinary bank transactions†is indeed a high-level business requirement, for which the example in the book didn’t need further detailing. Such detail would include: accepting cash and checks for deposit and issuing cash for withdrawals from customer accounts. Even lower-level detail would get to business rules about funds availability and the like. Internet banking is not an appropriate product/system solution, because it can’t handle cash and checks. .....
Would 'such detail' have included loan applications as an 'ordinary bank transaction'? If not, then adding it to the ATM would have been a business as well as a system requirement change.
And I was being somewhat disingenous myself with suggesting Internet Banking as an equivalent solution, but that was based on already seeing the typical system requirements and recognizing that cash withdrawal would be a crucial requirement that Internet Banking can't do; but, if you just read the business requirements, that may not be apparent. What if the bank doubled its branches and all were open 24 hours a day with sufficient tellers? I would never use an ATM again. (yes, my example would cost so much that it would overwhelm the value, but I am not sure where costs versus benefits comes in to this discussion.)
David Wright
Member, IIBA
"The Devil is in the Details." ...attribution unknown