INTRODUCTION

In the 1970s there was a great swing towards the idea that more time spent getting the requirements and design right would result in:

• shorter time spent coding and testing

• fewer bugs

• an all-round better product

At the same time, tools started to appear which automated parts of the coding and testing process. Thus it seemed we had the best of all worlds “ put the time and effort into the fun bit (requirements and design) “ and automate as much as possible of the time and labor- intensive stuff. As a result, conventional wisdom now has it that it is impossible to shorten the requirements and design phases of a project without seriously compromising the quality of the final product.

I believe this wisdom to be fundamentally untrue; and the rest of this chapter shows a way of significantly shortening a project and, if anything, improving the quality of the finished product. The next section talks about what really consumes the time during the requirements and design phases of projects. The following section describes how to carry out an accelerated analysis and design (AAD) session. The fourth section talks about the risks involved and how to deal with them. The fifth section talks about some of the practical considerations involved in carrying out AADs.