Agile requirements

The Rational Edge describes how to do effective requirements management and mitigate software risk within an agile development project in Agile Requirements Methods.

The article is written by Dean Leffingwell, one of the authors of the excellent Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach.

Leffingwell sets forth some basic principles of managing requirements. Software development teams should only create the documentation that adds value. Creating documentation is a time-consuming and expensive process, so if that documentation doesn’t help the development process then it shouldn’t be created at all.

Teams should choose a methodology that is appropriate to the project. Generally the larger and more distributed the team or the more critical a project is, the greater the need for documentation.

Lefingwell also sets out the requirements framework for three distinct types of projects. One using Extreme Programming, a larger project still using an agile methodology, and a project requiring a more robust methodology.

By understanding that requirements documents are created to manage risk and by recognizing likely sources of project risk, a development team can tailor their requirements methodology to meet the needs of an individual project.