Agility Guide

To get the most out of this chapter, it is necessary to understand the difference between a requirement and a solution. It is also necessary to understand that while we are describing how to write requirements, the most important thing is to understand and communicate them in the way that works for your project.

Rabbit projects have short durations between releases, and as much as possible, they avoid writing the requirements before starting to build a product to meet them. The advice in this chapter that applies to rabbit projects is simple: Rushing to a solution before understanding the requirementnote that we did not say "writing the requirement"generally wastes time. Without knowing the underlying reason for the solution (in other words, the essential requirement), the solution is likely to solve the wrong problem. But, armed with an understanding of the requirements, rabbit projects for the most part bypass writing the atomic requirements and use their scenarios to communicate the functional requirements.

Horse projects usually have a need to write their requirements. Compared to rabbits, horses have longer release cycles and geographically scattered stakeholders. This wider distribution of project participants puts greater emphasis on communicating requirements in a more precise and consistent form. It is vital that team members have a solid understanding of what a functional requirement is and what the functional requirements do for the eventual product. That said, horse projects should maximize the roles that their scenarios and a business class model play in communicating the functional requirements.

Elephant projects need a complete and correct requirements specification. All of the information in this chapter is relevant to them, but the discussion on level of detail is particularly pertinent.