Comments

Fascinating article that lays the foundations of RE to explain the important objectives of this subject. Then this article details in detail how artificial intelligence can help the requirements… Show comment

Thank you for your positive feedback Roland. Good to know that this article is still being read and valued. My own experience is that it is often hard to keep using the power of the requirements… Show comment

Perfect Classification of Requirements The best description of the usage and dependence of requirements and especially their attributing and classification I have ever seen. Great workout ! Show comment

Dear Mr Stockschläder, Thank you very much for your comment. It helps me clarify our position. When you write "keeping the system as the core thing to be created at the end” it raises the ob… Show comment

Dear Mr Regev, dear Mr Wegmann, dear Mr Hayard, I can totally see the fundamentals and implications of this article. Everybody has a different view of a system and more or less every stakeholder in a… Show comment

Hi Gildas Yes, stereotypes can be used, and if used properly in a modelling tool they can support requirements attributes. But they get very messy if there is a large number of useful attributes. For… Show comment

Thank You Keith for Your comment. Professional modelling tools seem to overcome the lacks you notice: Stereotypes can be used to add attributes (status, owner) to the requirement type of SysML. We… Show comment

SysML gives a very limited view of requirements Incorporating requirements into SysML can be incredibly useful in the right context. For example, in relating requirements to design elements as in the… Show comment

This topic is Still relevant today as I see organizations (and teams) still struggling to definitevely define the PO role when it comes to requirements. Even within an organization teams do not… Show comment

Good article and a very relevant topic. I am currently working within a team resembling the Customer Team - ie. as an RE within a scrum team responsible for representing the business to agile… Show comment

Dear Mr. Rogers,thank you for your kind feedback. In this article we only discussed the role product owner. However, there are a lot of topics aside from roles, e.g. artifacts (user stories, use… Show comment

BA role ever increaing importance This article really resonates with me from my experience in computing, business analysis, support, and as a data strategist and learning data scientist. I agree that… Show comment

I am a BA/PM who has been working on regular projects but will be shortly working within a department that deals a lot with big data, so, I found this helpful and educative. Every little helps, this… Show comment

Jeffrey added more comments which lead to a broader discussion which we have move that to the CPRE LinkedIn group. Show comment

I agree: It is an important issue that in practice it is not recognized that RE is a difficult job with specific demands for competence and skills. RE needs communication experts who feel at home in… Show comment

It is OK to have that expectation but it is very hard to find a versatile expert in BA/RE, application domain and solution domain. Here solution domain consists of two distinct, often exclusive… Show comment

This article is of high importance and consequence to RE. There are too many issues, analyses and findings. Although there are conclusions, I am not able to recall the key points, particularly with… Show comment

Currently, only a small number of companies focus on business analysis let alone RE as a discipline. The emphasis on "speed" using Agile (and any variation you can imagine) has pushed… Show comment

This is a very interesting paper! In the professional research circles, there are almost no published insights into the marketplace of business analysts in China. The authors close a real gap of… Show comment

Thank you for these detailed elaborations on requirements elicitation, management and analysis processes. Show comment

Thank you very much for sharing this article, again - this is very good, not too much to read, well put together. Would be a great support for my role. Show comment

Nice & useful document; will support our teaching at IBS Academy! Thank you! Show comment

Fantastic document. Thanks for sharing all that hard work into such a compact rule book. Love it. My regards to your team. Show comment

Nice article. About AI reqs, the presentation and maybe research by Prof Vogelsang is of interest. His presentation from 2009 gives an idea how to specify and work with "artificial… Show comment

The evidence that RE is the riskiest phase of software development comes from industrial studies performed by the Standish Group in the 90s and others more recently. The three most important success… Show comment

Nice interview, thanks for the insights. I wonder what recent empirical research underpins this statement: "there is ample evidence that RE constitutes the riskiest phase of software development… Show comment

Interesting article! Especially the part of AI systems and the new scope of requirements that lay ahead. Show comment

James, the granularity concept is useful not only to verify requirements completeness, but also to its consistency. For instance, when you identify a fragment of a functionality, it is usually… Show comment

Well described. There are various kinds of functional requirements that always helps you check whether the product is providing all the functionalities that were mentioned in the functional… Show comment

Great Article This was a really useful article - thank you. I had tried so many different search terms and perused so many articles before finding yours. Everything else was useless. Yours outlined… Show comment

Additional perspectives on granularity See my top quality tip of the year, “What is a test case?” at http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/top-ten-software-quality-tips-of-2010/ on … Show comment

Dear John, Thanks for your observation, which makes sense. First, let me say that this example is an extract from a real document. If we reason from a purely arithmetic perspective, then interval… Show comment

An interesting article marred by an incoherence The text gives the following example: "Speed between 250 and 220 kts: flap 5 degrees Speed between 220 and 200 kts: flap 15 degrees Speed between… Show comment

Outstanding context! I'll have to read it more than once to truly sink in, but very affirming. I am a firm believer in documenting what one is involved in during a project; how would one remember… Show comment

Detecting incoherent Requirements without mastery of language The methods suggested are welcome but all of them seem to demand mastery of language of text of requirements document. That is always so… Show comment

Sogeti has created a propietary editor for managing user stories and flow sketches in agile model-based testing services. Another option is to use Jira as a repository for user stories to be imported… Show comment

Do you know a tool to generate test cases in the KCycle? You mention the possibility in the paragraph “Test cases generation from semiformal user stories (K+).” There you mention specific K+ editors. Do … Show comment

This is a model-based approach, but the “model” is the set of user stories. If we modify user stories and their acceptance criteria according to requirement changes across iterations, then test cases are… Show comment

Do we have any existing examples of this approach being implemented . This approach might not work when a user story keeps moving from sprint to sprint and also the requirements change on it, correct? Show comment

Requirements Documentation Interesting post. However, would you really want to re-invent the manner in how you document requirements for every project? Would you not rather apply a standard way of… Show comment

Worthy of Consideration Thank you for challenging a bit of orthodoxy. Show comment

User Story and Requirement I see such existential pain in writers trying to paint the User Story as "something different" from a Requirement. Recently, I read "The Cruel Sea" by… Show comment

I fully agree that requirements in SysML are opaque objects and their relevance relies on the skills of the author. But is not it the same with classical Requirements Management tools as Doors? SysML… Show comment

What is the use of modelling requirements? For fans of graphical modelling languages, it is certainly a relief that they can now model objects called "requirements". In fact, this is a step… Show comment

Yes, sure, with SysML we also design architectures and designs. And we need to trace the design elements with respect to the requirements. That is exactly the aim of the… Show comment

Validation aspects Using SysML we not only specify the requirements, we also design a high level architecture and a design. There is need to say that the designs are consistent with the requirements.… Show comment

Hi Cesar, There are several ways modeling tools can help with impact analysis. First, of course, you have to model <<satisfy>> relationship between design elements and requirements in… Show comment

Hello Pascal, Thank you for the article, I enjoyed reading it. Could you provide and example of an automated impact analysis when the requirements change or say some words about how a Modelling tool… Show comment

Hi Willi, you can find examples of bdd and ibd in the freely downloadable OMG SysML 1.4 Specification (document: OMG ptc/13-12-10), annex D (Sample Problem). Usually, these diagrams are used for… Show comment

I am unfamiliar with the following diagrams. Block Definition Diagram and Internal Block Diagram. Is it possible to post some examples. Show comment

Hi Stephan Both are possible and legal in SysML! Here I was meaning that a requirement can refine a Use Case, adding non functional constraints for instance. Cordialement Pascal Show comment

Hello Pascal, thanks for the article, it's a good read. I just have one remark: I think the arrow direction of the refine-relationship should be from the use case (the dependent element) to the SysML… Show comment

As David pointed out, the generation of the backlog itself is out of the scope of this article, which begins with requirements and stories already “Created”, whatever it took to create them. My art… Show comment

The Product Backlog A hearty thank you to those who commented about this article picking up from the point at which a backlog already exists. If we are simply going to take for granted that User… Show comment

Perhaps this is out of the scope of the article , but no one ever seems to describe how the backlog comes to exist, its existence is just assumed , so on to the methodology that depends a… Show comment

Indeed, how to fill the backlog was out of scope. However, your question is interesting. First thought: elicitation techniques that are applicable to "classic" projects are still applicable… Show comment

Hi Fabian, Thank you for your valuable comment. Indeed, our article is written from a theoretical point of view. And because, as you say, the world is messy, difficult and complex, such a theoretical… Show comment

I like the approach to look the problem/goal/solution triangle from a very theoretical point of view. However, the world is messy, difficult and complex... I'm not sure if the entity relationship… Show comment

Dear Grigory Thank you for your extended feedback on our article. You are right that the term "requirement" has two faces: The originator (stakeholder) issues requirements to be implemented… Show comment

Very good article and yes, a shift of paradigm There are problems (and/or goals, I even think this distinguishing is not that important), and there are solutions. Requirements are secondary and they… Show comment

Dear Lakshmi, Thank you for your reaction. In our opinion, the requirements engineer's proposal is, at first, a set of candidate solutions, related to the analysis of the complete landscape of… Show comment

I agree with problems and goals. What do we call a requirement engineer's proposal? An idea? If it is different from problems / goals stated by stakeholders, then would you add it to one of these… Show comment

A truly excellent article I want to commend the authors for putting together a truly excellent article. They manage to take what are often treated as slightly-related concepts and not only tie them… Show comment

Solutions first, requirements second ... Dear Josef Falk, Indeed, we see a fundamental paradigm shift, which, in my opinion, is triggered by the Agile storm that has been raging over the IT world.… Show comment

First requirements - then solution? Or the other way round? Dear authors, Thank you for the invitation to give feedback to your article. I would like to state briefly: I totally agree with your… Show comment

Matriz de requisitos Excelente material. Não é tarefa fácil para o analista de negócios descrever todos os requisitos considerando o ponto de vista do cliente e do fornecedor, levando em consideração neces… Show comment

Content clarity My feedback is just to make my compliments to the author for the clarity and depth with which the content has been exposed. I think it was really praiseworthy to share the framework. Show comment

Focusing on requirements for quality attributes, we distinguish external (i.e., wholly visible to customers e.g., usability) from mixed (i.e., partially visible to customers e.g., safety) from… Show comment

Requirements can be viewed as verifiable characteristics of a work product that are needed for success. There are 3 types of requirements from this perspective: functional, quality goals, and… Show comment

Goals are the reason why projects are initiated - requirements are, what systems must fulfill I totally agree with this view. I use the terms "goal" and "requirement" in a very… Show comment

Yes, it is. Show comment

Thanks for your comments. I agree that one of the primary reasons that Business Analysis is often overlooked in agile contexts is simply the fact that there is little mention of it in the many of the… Show comment

Thank you for the well written and thoughtful article. I have seen instances where the logic is agile doesn't mention business analysts and therefore we don't need them lead to unfortunate personnel… Show comment

In reply to: “it seems to me that there is inevitably a tension between on the one hand Agile's push to develop partial solutions delivering incremental business value and on the other hand the BA's d… Show comment

Really good article. The vision of Agile and business analysis representing the two most important streams of development out of the software crisis which must now join together is a powerful one. If… Show comment

Re: “Your Figure 5 [bar graph of success rates vs. method vs. RDMM] seems to strongly indicate that it’s not Agile that provides substantial benefits to project success, it’s a higher level of requi… Show comment

Agile Appears to be a non-factor or negative factor. Requirements maturity seems to be the key. Your Figure 5 seems to strongly indicate that it's not Agile that provides substantial benefits to… Show comment

Models in Agile - of course! Thanks for the comments Reid! And you clearly know me all too well! Fear not, I still think models are hugely valuable in scaling Agile too. Visual models help when… Show comment

Phenomenal! Candase, Joy, you just increased my knowledge of scaling by 1000% in a few minutes. Extremely well-written, highly digestable. But Joy, where were the visual models? :-) Show comment

I completely agree with what is written in the article. In my courses, I recommend to not codify the degree of bindingness or priority in the requirement's text. This would not support a systematic… Show comment

I definitely support the views of the author and commentators that building words into requirements to express importance, liability or urgency is counter-productive. By 'giving commands' it also… Show comment

Subject: When shall does not need to be must Dear RE, Have you ever used such user requirement templates: As an <­actor­> I wish <­action­> so that… Show comment

My doubts were justified. Thanks Alan for pointing out that reuse of requirements is another scenario in which the degree of necessity included in the requirements statement is “in the way”. You sha… Show comment

Absolutely agree with the statements in this article. MoSCoW method for setting priorities to the requirements always seemed a bit risky to me. Even Karl Wiegers talked about it in one of his… Show comment

Thanks for the reference to Karl’s article. Enjoy life where you are (not in Moscow, I guess). Karol Frühauf Show comment

There is an important implied assumption here that I would like to raise and discuss the consequences of. Namely that the requirements and priority collected and documented are for a single… Show comment

Dear Patrick, thanks for your feedback. Actually, I did not intend to discuss the denotations of the degrees of necessity. I quoted some literature as a kind of introduction. My intentions was to… Show comment

Thanks for your article. I saw in the past, in a number of company recommendations, the type of gradation you develop in this article. The goal was to settle priority levels among requirements,… Show comment

Dear Maurice, IREB is working on this. ISTQB just is some few years ahead. I will repeat this study regulary, so we can observe the development! Best regards, Andrea Show comment

Interesting article. Confirms my opinion about how many companies look at requirements engineering. That is: it is certainly not a job, it is some kind of role that can be performed by every… Show comment

Thank you for this article. To me this article proves that there is still a long way ahead for IREB. IREB wants to professionalize Requirements Engineering. More than 27,000 certifications are a huge… Show comment

Hi Frank, you’re perfectly right – but it’s not an easy task. Recently IREB started to talk not to the RE community only, but to trade groups in order to inform their members about Requirements Engin… Show comment

Thank you! I lead a BA organization and have been circling this issue over the last few weeks after it occurred to me out project teams (and stakeholders) do not really understand the business… Show comment

Hi Rene, For requirements models here, we are talking about any model used to help find requirements. We were basing our analysis on the RML models found in Visual Models for Software Requirements.… Show comment

Hi, in chapter "Project Analysis Results" you are talking about requirements models. Can you explain that a little bit? What models are this, can you give an example please? Did I… Show comment

I guess the principal idea is ok, rather than focus on a document specification, focus on added value delivering, and avoid wasting time in useless projects and features. Just that it's not enough...… Show comment

Dear Suzanne, many thanks for your insights. I hope our discussion inspires the readers of the magazine to contribute. All the best Karol Show comment

Dear Karol, Thanks for your response, here are a few thoughts about the questions that you raise. "So it seems that the Fit Criteria add the necessary preciseness to the description of the thing… Show comment

Dear Suzanne, many thanks for your feedback and sorry for the delayed reaction. The distribution of work you suggest is: BA defines the requirement and the Fit Criterion Tester defines the test case… Show comment

Hello Karol, Thanks for your thought provoking piece. I certainly share your experiences where the word "acceptance" is used in a very elastic way. I agree with your distinction between:… Show comment

Happy to know that you have some takeaways from this article, Sandeep. Good luck with your RE journey! Show comment

I absolutely agree with article and am learning to become good dealing when people don't like or have different matrix. I struggled with dealing getting requirements & this article helps is… Show comment

Dear Mr. Pfuhl Thank you for your kind comment. Some pre-agile requirements methods do a very good job in the agile world as well. But also the combination with new methods like story mapping might… Show comment

Lots of good thoughts Dear Ms Paschen, Dear Mr Fuchs, thank you for this article which I stumbled upon while searching for an easy, structured way to document the bird's eye view of our running… Show comment

Thank you for taking the time to read our article and for your feedback. Writing good requirements takes a lot of effort and skill by the requirements engineer and I hope we have provided some… Show comment

Hi Corrine and Albena, Thank you for Part 1 of a useful and interesting article. When you ponder on the topic it is amazing that we can produce useful requirements. Maybe I am mailing prematurely and… Show comment

Great article, we need more survey based research like this. How can the Agile approach claim that changing requirements are shown to be well addressed in the face of the contradiction that hidden,… Show comment

Thanks Paul. The survey sample is of course quite small, but the message that requirements problems have not simply gone away in Agile projects is certainly one which chimes with my own experience.… Show comment

Multitasking: not a try skill I agree with a lot of what the author is saying regarding what women bring to the table as BAs. I need to take issue with the concept of multitasking however. It has… Show comment

Thanks Annick! Show comment

Subject: Techniques for eliciting and documenting security requirements Very interesting approach to elicit security requirements: considering abuse case, misuse case and confuse, additionnally to… Show comment

I enjoyed reading it I came across this article while doing research for the future of business analysis. I agree with you that role of business analyst is changing, and the demand will change, too.… Show comment

Excellent article , Author writes to the point and I agree with observations noted. Show comment

Hi Peter, Thanks for the feedback. Glad that you also find the topic relevant. Will let the survey run for a month or two, here and in other forums aimed in particular at Agile proponents. The aim is… Show comment

Great idea Hi Gareth, I'm really excited that you undertake this survey. I was thinking about doing something similar because I wanted to test my hypothesis that agile RE in real projects is much… Show comment

Thank you for this perfect definition of my dream job. Currently working within a partly-agile project, I focus on parts of that you've described within this article, namely the customer… Show comment

Fixed price offer Projects/Work packages can really be a bottleneck Recently we are doing a fixed offer project with our North american counterparts. Even though we are from the the same company… Show comment

Dear Arjun, many thanks for sharing your experiences with fixed price projects. Exceeding a budget by a factor of three is certainly a very unpleasant situation. I think you are absolutely right: If… Show comment

Years to do requirements? Obviously not a good practice... If something. Is that big, you need business and information architecture, break the beast into cohesive and decoupled pieces, and start… Show comment

Dear David, it's interesting for me to see how different your experiences are compared to my ones. The phone number example is a good one for this: I have seen a lot of requirements of this kind. In… Show comment

Need a little separation Two things going on here, sloppy requirements and unprofessional contractors. My experience is on the requirements side, driven by the reality that detailed requirements can… Show comment

Dear Paul, thanks for your feedback. You are right: If things go pear-shaped and there is no contract that describes the committed requirements, a costumer has basically no protection in law. But in… Show comment

Good article, lots of nodding heads from this side......but.....a contract is a contract, a customer has to protect themselves somehow and fixed price contracts provide protection in law if things go… Show comment

Subject: Feedback on feedback As I read the article, the author's point is that outsourcing CAN lead to significant improvements in processes such as requirements development and management, not that… Show comment

Subject: Failure seldom leads to insight In my experience with more than 20 outsourcing engagements from all perspectives and observing many others, I’ve found that without appropriate guidance u… Show comment

I think I can answer my own question now: http://patentfile.org/patent-process-and-invention-timeline/ Show comment

Dear Dr. Ebert Few product management articles I read discuss intellectual property (patents, trademarks, designs, utility models) and how to incorporate IP into an efective product management… Show comment

Subject: Great article with valuable information Many thanks for posting this information. I could clearly correlate myself to be in the transition phase from a developer to BA. I am working in a… Show comment

Hi Simon Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I could summarize my advice on the question of outsourcing by quoting my father-in-law: "Cheap is expensive." Not always, with respect to… Show comment

Awesome article. Do you have more information or advice around IT outsourcing, pros and cons etc. I could search on the internet for this and I have but I respect your opinions and advice as you are… Show comment

Benjamin, Nice to hear from you. You're not the only one who thought RIF/ReqIF was dead. Hope you're doing well. Best, Michael Show comment

Michael, thanks a lot for the summary and update. There have been times in the earlier steps of the "Hype cycle", were I never would have thought it will survive ... I did not follow ReqIF… Show comment

Chris, I am glad you found the article helpful. Are you familiar with the "Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies" (urenio.org/2010/10/14/emerging-technologies-in-the-it-industry)? This… Show comment

I currently use the DOORS tool for requirement management / traceability, and had worked on a project where I had the opportunity to experiment with ReqIF to exchange requirement objects. This is the… Show comment

First of all, I liked this article too much, very formal and well structured, the author's quality is noticed. I just wonder, why today with all the advance in ML and text recognition, stuff like… Show comment

In my organization, an opportunity appeared to become the Requirements Queen, and I'm taking it. As one big project is wrapping up, I'm preparing to work on requirement specs for other projects, and… Show comment

Inspired by this paper, and wishing to give it a proper credit, landed at making an overview of major topics of reuse in RE! linkd.in/1oz4ppG. The paper touches nicely upon important topics of… Show comment

It is well-reasoned and well-supported by citation of industrial practices—not very common in BA & RE publications. Then I found the reason. It is based on real manufacturing and service… Show comment

AA1: This article is very comprehensive, exhaustive full of analysis and cautions with citations from established authorities on BA, RE, SE, PM etc. AA2 It gives a hope that one can possibly get… Show comment

Mats Wessberg: For all the claims of "engineering" applied to RE the methods and techniques of RE lack the essentials of what makes anything scientific and engineering. In contrast the… Show comment

Thank you Kim, for this very inspiring and interestingly written article. I had a lot of discussions with colleagues on the topic, if it is really possible and useful to write requirements that are… Show comment