The Volere Requirements Process

This book describes a process for successfully discovering, verifying, and documenting requirements. Each chapter covers an activity of the process, or some aspect of requirements gathering that is needed to complete the activity.

Volere is the Italian word for "to wish" or "to want."

As you learn more about the process, keep in mind that it is meant to be a guide for producing deliverables. What you do with the process is driven by the relevant deliverables, not by the procedures. We would like you to think of the process as a list of things that have to be done (to some degree of detail) for successful requirements projects, rather than as a lock-step procedure that must be followed at all costs. As you read about each part, think about how you would perform that part of the procedure given your own structural and organizational setup.

What you do with the process is driven by the relevant deliverables, not by the procedures.

To understand the process, it is not necessary to read the book in the presented orderalthough you may encounter some terminology that assumes knowledge from previous chapters. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the requirements process. and you can find a complete and detailed model of it in appendix A.

Your requirements needs will naturally differ from those of other readers, so you will therefore be interested in exploring some aspects of the process before others. Once you are familiar with the basic outline of the process, feel free to plunge in wherever you feel it will be most valuable.