Chapter 1. An Introduction to QFD: Driving Vision Vertically Through the Project

One good thing about small, one-person software development efforts is that the person with the ideas and the product's vision is the same person that specs out the product and writes the code. There was a time when I fancied that the big problems in software development were the technical problems; problems that involved specs, design, and code. At some point, my opinion on this started to change as I began to notice that the thorny problems folks encounter in projects are quite frequently people problems. Given that few projects are one-person shows anymore, how do you point a group of people in the same direction, help them envision a problem in the same way, and synchronize and coordinate their efforts toward a common vision? That, it finally occurred to me, was the real problem in software development.

One form of this "people problem" that large projects face is how to move product vision and its associated business drivers, hatched at the senior management/marketing level, vertically downward to the project team level so that the product that is built, tested, and released is true to that original vision and business drivers.