Chapter 10. Writing the Requirements

in which we turn the requirements into written form

Writing the requirements refers to the task of putting together a description of the product from the business point of view. Typically, this description is called a specification, and we use the term here to mean whatever description you are compiling, whether it is written or not. It is appropriate to think of this activity as building a specification: You assemble a specification, one requirement at a time, rather than writing it all at once.

"No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his verbal descriptions failed to shine with the same light. His last published work, which outlines the whole history of his unsavory dealings with the Board of Longitude, brings his style of endless circumlocution to its peak. The first sentence runs on, virtually unpunctuated for twentyfive pages."

Source: Dava Sobel, Longitude

Writing the requirements is not really a separate activity, but is done mainly during the trawling and prototyping activities as you discover the requirements. However, it makes sense in the context of this book to devote a chapter to discussing how a requirement is written. This is that chapter. See Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1.

You discover the intention of the requirements when you are trawling and prototyping. We refer to these as potential requirements. The writing activity transforms the resulting ideas and halfformed thoughts into precise and testable requirements. We call these formalized potential requirements. The Quality Gateway tests the requirement before adding it to the requirements specification.