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Why has it been necessary to write so many different, book-length treatises about requirements management on software projects? Is it not possible to develop an approach to handling software requirements that is simple enough to express concisely -- and yet can work with large, complex projects as well as smaller efforts?

At the risk of using a word that disturbs many in the field of software engineering, requirements management is just a process. The more simply this process can be described, the more likely it will be to work in real software organizations. So rather than consider every possible nuance relating to managing software requirements, this article will attempt to express the essence of an approach that can work well on virtually any Agile software development project. In the appendix, I include a detailed example illustrating the key ideas.

Author: Theodore F. Rivera, Software Group Strategist, IBM

In business today, any project is ultimately measured by one thing: return on investment. There are dozens of metrics to be measured along the way—from budget and deadline to scope and stakeholder satisfaction—however, at the end of the day, ROI trumps all.

Remember the movie Titanic? It overshot its budget by a nautical mile and took much longer to make than originally scheduled. However, a lifeboat full of Oscars later, the movie grossed about a billion dollars around the world.

Unfortunately, with your current projects, you probably won’t be able to lean on Leonardo DiCaprio to drive profits. That’s why, from a business standpoint, it makes sense to give your projects the best chance of success from the very beginning of the project life cycle. In other words, don’t sink your chances at profitability before you even leave the harbor. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

The best way to do this is to mix business analysis into your project management efforts. For years, professionals have been realizing that the infusion of business analysis can dramatically improve the likelihood of project success. Business analysis is essential for establishing project requirements, ensuring that your stakeholders are on board and eliminating the countless hours of rework that can wreak havoc on your budgets and timelines.

To help guide you in the integration of business analysis into your project mix, I’ve listed five key tips. From requirements gathering to communication to verification, think of it as your crash course in the value of business analysis. Each tip can be mapped back to the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBATM) Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®)

Author: Glenn R. Brûlé

One of the issues high on the agenda of many CIOs is to align IT efforts with the company’s strategic goals. But how you do trace a line of code back to the strategic goal that caused it to be written? If we’re able to do this then, and only then, can it be said that IT is aligned with the business strategy. 

Software security remains a hot topic. Everyone from grandmothers to Fortune 500 companies has heard the stories of identity theft, data loss, and general mayhem caused by viruses and attackers on the Internet. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, 1,474 different software vulnerabilities were reported with only 64 of them having posted solutions. Th...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that job opportunities for systems analysts will increase at an above-average pace through 2014, as organizations continue to build and implement increasingly complex technologies. If you've been wondering whether you'd be happy in the role of systems analyst, take a look at the following list. If you see...

Systems analysts research, plan, and recommend software and system choices to meet their client organizations’ business requirements. Systems analysts primarily function as links between vendors and organizations. They develop cost analyses, system designs, and implementation schedules. They also study the feasibility of computer systems befo...

Be it explicitly or not, someone always performs the role of requirements analyst on a software project. The official title may be requirements engineer, business analyst, system analyst, product manager, or simply analyst , but someone needs to translate multiple perspectives into a requirements specification and communicate with other stakeholder...

In this article, the focus shifts to a particular view in the 4+1 Architecture Views, defined by the Rational Unified Process. We will examine how to use Activity Diagrams as "roadmaps" for the Process View, to capture processing flows as a series of steps. We will also discuss several techniques for creating these diagrams and ensuring their effec...

The core purpose of software development is to provide solutions to customers' real problems. Use cases are a vital aspect of a technique that has been used successfully to ensure that development projects actually focus on these problems. They are used to discover, capture, and present customer requirements in a form that is accessible to develope...

The author illustrates how to use UML Activity Diagrams to capture and communicate the details of user interface navigation and functionality, and explain three stereotypes: presentation, exception, and connector. Author: Ben Lieberman

Some days, you wish you had telepathy. You just know that your development staff is holding back in some way, but you don’t know how to get them to communicate. Is the project in trouble, but they’re afraid to tell you? Since your software development staff won’t tell you what they’re really thinking, I asked them to confide in us instead. I pose...

This article proposes innovative ways to combine three of the most important methodologies that have emerged in the past decade in the field of information systems architecture: UML, RUP, and the Zachman Framework. Over the past decade, the advantages of using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for modeling software applications have become clea...