Chapter 5. Trawling for Requirements


in which we drag the net through the work area looking for requirements, and discuss some useful techniques for doing so

The term trawling comes from our partner Steve McMenamin (a source of many useful and descriptive images). We use it because it evokes the nature of what we are doing here: fishing. Not idly dangling a line while hoping a fish might come by, but rather methodically running a net through the work to catch every possible requirement. With a little experience and good techniques, the skipper of a trawler knows where to fish so that he gets the fish he wants, and not the ones that he doesn't.

"Requirements don't litter the landscape out at the customer site."

Source: Beyer and Holtzblatt, Contextual Design


This chapter explores the techniques for discovering and determining both the requirements and the people involved in the process. You have two major concerns here: finding all of the requirements and finding the correct requirements. This means, inevitably, you need a variety of techniques so as to find the ones most applicable to the stakeholders who are providing the requirements.




Mastering the Requirements Process
Mastering the Requirements Process (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321419499
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 371

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