Effective requirements practices - Ralph Rowland Young

More than 25% of all software projects still fail outright -- costing organizations billions of dollars. One key reason: a failure to effectively define project requirements. In this book, leading enterprise software project manager Ralph Young brings together today's best techniques for gathering requirements, presenting solutions for every project role and stakeholder -- technical and business. Young demonstrates how to identify initial requirements, prioritize and specify requirements, iterate specifications to achieve greater clarity; identify the best ways each requirement can be met; and verify and validate requirements prior to coding. He offers proven techniques for establishing positive partnerships and effective communication with business managers, technical professionals, and software users; handling changes that occur during the course of a project; maintaining a project's momentum in the face of corporate politics and other obstacles; and much more. The book includes comprehensive templates that can be used to improve existing software requirements processes -- or to establish entirely new processes. For all project stakeholders: IT executives, project managers, software engineers, application developers, testers, quality specialists, integrators, even software consumers.

Ralph R. Young is the Director of Software Engineering, Systems and Process Engineering, at Litton PRC, Inc., a leading provider of information technology and systems-based solutions. Litton PRC, Inc. is also a CMM Level 5 organization. Dr. Young is an avid reader of the industry literature. He leads PRC's Requirements Working Group of requirements engineers. He teaches the 10-hour PRC "Requirements Course for Practitioners" and consults frequently about both requirements engineering and process improvement for PRC's customers. He has been awarded PRC's Teamwork, Leadership, and Continuous Improvement Awards and has been recognized often for his contributions in process management and improvement.