Organizing Requirements for Product Families

   

Many industries build sets of closely related products that have much functionality in common, yet each product contains some unique features. Such product families might be inventory control systems, telephone answering machines, application development tools, burglar alarm systems, and so on.

For example, suppose you are building a set of software products, each with some shared functionality, that may need to share data or otherwise communicate with one another when in use. In such a case, you might organize your requirements set with the following approach.

  • Develop a product-family Vision document that describes the ways in which the products are intended to work together and the other features that could be shared.

  • To better understand the shared-usage model, you might also develop a set of use cases showing how the users will interact with various applications running together.

  • Develop a common software requirements set that defines the specific requirements for shared functionality, such as menu structures, common GUIs, and communication protocols.

  • For each product in the family, develop a Vision document, supplementary specification, and a use-case model that defines its specific functionality.

The resultant organization is shown in Figure 15-4.

Figure 15-4. Requirements organization for a software product family

graphics/15fig04.gif

   


Managing Software Requirements[c] A Use Case Approach
Managing Software Requirements[c] A Use Case Approach
ISBN: 032112247X
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 257

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